Instead Of One Day Of Presents (We Have Eight Crazy Nights)
by FortySevens
Summary: The holiday trope!fic where Darcy Lewis ends up taking Bucky Barnes home with her for Chanukah.
1. Chapter 1

**- Chapter 1 (In which Steve asks Darcy for a favor)**

Darcy Lewis' guestroom in the heart of the Avengers' Stark Tower residence looked like a hurricane blazed through it.

Her suite didn't usually have clothes and shoes and toiletries strewn on every available surface and spilling out of the oversized suitcase taking up most of her unmade bed, but the Stark Industries private jet was taking off in two hours to take her home and she _hadn't actually packed yet._

When she traveled with Jane to parts unknown, on Earth or otherwise, nine times out of ten, Darcy had to be the one who was packed not only first, but _way_ in advance, especially after the one time Jane was too distracted by last-minute equations and forgot the important things, like her toothbrush.

And her pants.

_That_ made for a memorable weekend at a conference in Oslo.

But when it came to going home for one of her religion's many major holidays—for the entirety of said holiday, because if there was one thing her mother was good at, it was making her feel guilty—Darcy absolutely, positively did not want to go, and therefore put off packing to the very last minute.

She endured four years of holiday trips back to California when she was at Culver, but then she waltzed right into Jane's life to start off what would have been her final semester of her super senior year, and hadn't been home since the world opened up to her in New Mexico.

Because in the four years that followed, New York happened and she spent _way_ too much time with a Norwegian For Dummies handbook practically glued to her right hand, elves broke London and Ian lost the car keys, Jane found the car keys and was infested by creepy red air, SHIELD turned out to be full of Nazis and Steve had to be fished out of the Potomac by his apparently not-dead bestie, and Tony built accidentally homicidal robots with giant a Pinocchio complex that tried to wipe out all of humanity.

So her parents, who sort of had the hang on what she could tell them about her life, sort of understood that she was a little busy trying to keep her best friend and mentor _alive_.

Sort of.

But then Jane decided to spend a few weeks in London with her mother for the woman's fiftieth birthday, and also check in with Erik—specifically to make sure he was still consistently wearing pants while in public, but also because of some developments with that old machine he built while under Loki's influence.

And the Avengers were getting ready to head out to avenge things in China, or avenge China, or maybe it was furthering the Avengers' diplomatic relationships _with_ China—Darcy had honestly tuned it out in favor of showing Thor all the best places to get Jane a birthday present and avoid last year's accidental incident with the three goats and the donkey.

But all it really amounted to was that it effectively cut Darcy's long list of excuses to avoid home, well, none.

So back to Santa Barbara she had to go.

For _ten days_.

As in, ten days, one right after the other after the other with her entire family, who was so completely different from the people she surrounded herself with these days.

And not just because her family wasn't a bunch of _superheroes._

Darcy sighed, running her hands over her face and into her hair as she glared at the contents of her closet, mentally considering each piece of her carefully cultivated wardrobe of casual chic, which had been working out _really_ well for her the last few years, and dismissing each and every one of them.

This was not an auspicious start to her so-called vacation.

She continued to frown, waiting for the universe to give her the answers she was desperately seeking when there was a knock on the door.

"_Please_ be someone telling me I have to cancel," she muttered as she stomped into the living room, tripping over a pile of tangled jeans and throw pillows that had somehow migrated to the hallway before she got to the door, nudging a pair of sandals out of the way with her foot before she opened it.

Captain America—because Steve was definitely rocking his stealth suit's blue spangly tights and shoulder holster—was standing in the doorway.

"There _is_ an emergency! _Yes!_" She pumped her fist in the air. "Is Doctor Doom attacking again? Space cows? Ninja zombies from that creepy other dimension Clint accidentally fell into that one time last year? Is the government going after super beings again? New York City sewer alligator revolt?"

He blinked, "Um, no, no, no, I wouldn't be surprised, and I'm pretty sure those aren't real. Can we come in?"

Before Darcy could retort that the New York City alligators were definitely real, she noticed the 'we', and then noticed Bucky was standing just over his shoulder, mostly obscured by the shield holstered across Steve's back—by either magnets or magic or pure, unadulterated patriotism, no one really knew.

"Oh, hi Bucky," she chirped and moved to the side. "Yeah, come on in. Sorry about the mess. Sort of. Rough morning, you know?"

She had to kick her sandals out of the way again before she could close the door, and she watched Bucky take a steadying breath before he took a careful step in from the hall.

Everyone said Tony was Type-A, but Bucky's case of post-traumatic OCD—which apparently _was_ a real thing—took the damn cake.

_Captain America_ looked more than a little ridiculous as he sat down on the only open space on her couch, between some laundry that she prayed to Odin was clean and a pile of books from her sophomore-year decision to major in women's studies that somehow made it halfway around the world and back.

On the other hand, Bucky scuttled over to the far side of the room and propped his shoulder against the floor-to-ceiling windows, letting the duffel hanging off his arm fall to his feet.

She looked at them both, and then arched a brow when neither said a word, "So the world isn't currently about to end?"

"No."

"Damn," she winced at the looks she got. "I mean, yay. That is _awesome_. Because the end of the world would be terrible, and we all learned our lesson with that thing that Wanda can do. So what brings you by? Come to see me off?"

Steve leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, gloved hands pressed together and serious all over his face, "You know that there's still a shoot-to-kill order on Bucky in China, right?"

Sparing a glance at Bucky, who was still more or less impassive and unsurprised at something as serious as _that_, she shrugged, "I may or may not have seen it in a report, or a news broadcast, or you know, all over Twitter."

The bashful look that crossed his face made the fact that he was in uniform just so much more ridiculous, and Darcy had to resist the urge to giggle as he shook his head, "Well, with Pepper in meetings in Europe and Maria down in Virginia overseeing the Initiative training camp, I was thinking that maybe Bucky could join you on your trip home?"

Darcy blinked, looked from Steve to Bucky, who continued to betray a grand total of none of his thoughts, and back to Steve again, "I don't think I heard you right," her brows furrowed as she rocked on her heels and leaned forward. "You want Bucky to come with _me_, when I go home for Chanukah? As in today."

"If that's all right with you," he looked so earnest and she wanted to throw up a little. "We agreed that it's better that he not be alone this time of year, but with most of the residence clearing out, and the fact that most people don't know much about Bucky, so you won't get hounded-"

She scratched her forehead when he trailed off, "Steve, I know things are a little different now compared to back in the ye olde, but do you have any idea what it implies when a person brings someone of similar age home to a major, family-based holiday for the first time?"

He arched a brow, "That you're being welcoming for a friend who doesn't have anywhere else to go?"

"I can't tell if you're intentionally being dense or if you're being seriously serious right now," she looked at Bucky. "You've known him for a hundred years, can you translate?"

"_Darcy._"

She clapped her hands together, "Okay, seriously serious it is then," she looked back to Bucky. "So Barnes, what do you know about Chanukah?"

"That you can spell it about sixteen different ways?"

With an owlish blink, she shrugged, "Fair enough," she looked back at Steve. "I hope you know what you're getting him into. Any trauma induced by my family is therefore, your fault."

Steve smiled, "I don't think it'll come to that."

"Clearly, you haven't heard me bitch about my mother after far too much of that boxed wine Tony thinks we don't know he likes so much," she looked at Bucky. "If you want to stay here and be a hermit for a week and a half, no one is actually going to judge you."

"It's fine."

She sighed, "All right then, Lewis family guest it is," she looked around. "JARVIS, where's my phone? I must inform the Generalissima and somehow convince her and Dad to let a man sleep in my room for a week and a half, because we haven't had a guest room since Mara was born, and while I'm sure Bucky would be fine camping outside, that's stupid."

"It's in a box of PopTarts in the cabinet under the sink."

Bucky snorted back a laugh, and she rolled her eyes, smiling a little as she crossed over to the tiny kitchen she rarely ever used, since it was a million times more fun to eat in the common kitchen, _especially_ when Natasha decided to cook for the team, "How did it even get there?"

"I'm sure you don't actually want to know."

"Got that right," she ducked under the sink and grabbed her phone from its depths. "Anyway Bucky, sit tight, I'm almost done packing. Give me five, ten minutes, tops."

She popped back up and glanced across the open-plan apartment to her bedroom, wincing at the sight of her still unopened suitcase, "Or maybe a half hour. Hey JARVIS, can you cue up that music video that Six13 did about Chanukah to Taylor Swift's _Shake It Off_? That'll basically explain like, the rest of everything you need to know."

By the time Darcy finished packing—aka growling and just throwing the rest of her closet into her suitcase—she and Bucky were only forty-five minutes late for her original flight time, which the pilot assured them was _way_ earlier than Tony ever was, even when Pepper was riding herd on him.

After the plane—allegedly the one where Tony used to party with the flight attendants in his pre-Afghanistan life—took off, Darcy padded over to the lounge where Bucky was sprawled across one of the couches with a tablet in hand, "What are you reading?" She sat down next to him and glanced down at the screen, eyes wide when she saw her dad's drivers license photo in the upper right corner. "Are those dossiers on my _family_?"

"I got them from JARVIS," he muttered as he swiped the bio away and Darcy could see more small files with each of her family members' names. "He wanted me to be prepared."

"How did _he_ get them?" she almost screeched, then shook her head and took a calming breath because she was going to be an _adult_ about this. "Never mind, very stupid question. Remind me that I need to have a strongly-worded conversation with him about privacy when we get home."

"Noted."

She pinched the bridge of her nose as she drew her legs up and sat cross-legged, "You know," she drawled as she propped her chin on her palm. "You could just _ask_ me about them. I'll have you know I am a _wealth_ of information. Most of it might not even be useless like my knowledge of nineties pop music that you refuse to educate yourself with."

Bucky put the tablet aside and turned to look at her, his expression bland, "Your knowledge of modern popular culture scares me."

"Good," she winked. "So, questions?"

"You haven't been home for years?"

"Nope. Been too busy trying to keep Jane alive."

He arched a brow, and Darcy shrugged, "You know her self-preservation is about as bad as Steve's," they shared a laugh. "She may not throw herself out of planes without parachutes, which will _definitely_ give you an ulcer one day, but come on, you were briefed about Jane's incident with that creepy red Infinity thingy."

"I've said this before: you're all insane."

"Well _duh_," she dropped one leg onto the floor and turned to face him. "But yes. I haven't been home. Hard to go back after everything I've seen. The person who moved to New Mexico for six science credits to graduate isn't the same as the person I am now, but they don't _know_ that."

He smiled, but it was crooked, "I think I know where you're coming from."

Reaching out, she hesitated for a brief second and then nudged his shoulder, "Figured," with a smile, she hopped off the couch, "And on that note, I'm going to make use of the bar. Martini?"

"One of us should stay clear-headed."

She blinked, "Is that a no?"

Bucky gave her a look, and she smirked, "More for me then."


	2. Chapter 2

**Eight Months Ago, Stark Tower Gym**

Bucky was wandering aimlessly through the fitness level—because there was an _entire floor in the building_ dedicated to keeping the Avengers in shape to protect the planet—when the door to the men's locker room was flung open, and someone who was definitely _not_ a male barreled into him.

"Oh crap!" A high, female voice hissed, one hand rubbing her forehead as she looked up. "You. Hi. Come on."

Before he could get a word in, she grabbed his arm and tugged him along, sprinting through the halls, and they were on the other side of the building when she finally slowed, her breaths coming in short gasps.

With wide eyes, he settled his hands on her shoulders when she swayed, her face bright read as he chest heaved, and he finally noticed the white-knuckled grip she had around the familiar garment in her right hand, "Why are you in possession of Agent Barton's pants?"

"I'm getting him back for a thing he did in New Mexico," she gasped as she tried to force air in her lungs, her vision blurring, and for a minute, there were two men standing in front of her. "It's totally legit, I swear."

He looked at her blankly, and Darcy blinked, "New Mexico? Thor's landing, crazy metal robot incident number two, world's most obvious paramilitary organization moving in around so-called satellite debris, Thor's brother's temper tantrum, my stolen iPod? Dude, where were you?"

"Cryogenically frozen."

"_Lewis! I know you're around here somewhere!_"

Clint's bellow echoed through the hall, and she smothered a giggle as she pressed against the wall next to Bucky, glancing back and forth for the irate archer, "Well, okay then. If you help me get up to the roof, I'll tell you _all_ about it."

He tilted his head as he took a second to regard her, "Do you even know who I am?"

She snorted, hiking her bag higher up her shoulder, "Uh yeah. Steve sat Jane and me down when you first showed up, all grumpy and homeless looking, which by the way, I was coming back from a coffee run and couldn't get back into the building for like, the _four_ hours it took for lockdown to lift and Jane was pissed her latte got cold," she waved a dismissive hand. "Anyway, Steve made a speech about giving you space to recover and everything. It was almost inspiring enough for me to listen to him."

"But," he hesitated. "Not completely?"

"Dude, isolation is literally the last thing you need these days. Also, sometimes I still find it difficult to reconcile the fact that Steve is a real person and not created by the U.S. army as a piece of war propaganda," she put her free hand out. "I'm Darcy, minion of the highest order and unofficial Avengers' social media lackey. Will you _please_ hell me hide from everyone's favorite, and currently pants-lacking archer?"

If there's one thing Bucky had been doing since decided to accept Steve's offer and move into Stark Tower, it was think.

He thought a _lot_.

He thought about his memories he knew were real, about the tail end of his time with Hydra after that last wipe, the fight with Steve on the Hellicarrier when his programming was finally breaking down, the stray fragments of being in a war and having two flesh and blood arms and the camaraderie with men who were his friends but he didn't know their names anymore, and even the vague, nebulous memories of growing up in a place that looked like Brooklyn, but wasn't, not now.

This time though, Bucky looked at Darcy, and then back down the hall where he could distantly hear Clint muttering under his breath as he made his way in their direction, and he made a decision.

He decided not to think.

"Come on," he nodded toward the adjacent hallway with his chin. "We'll take the auxiliary staircase."

Darcy led the way, pulling Clint's pants through the strap of her messenger bag as she walked, "Ugh, stairs."

"Beggars can't be choosers."

"Ha! You _do_ have a personality. Bruce owes me five bucks."

He arched a brow, "You placing bets about me, doll?"

Glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, she smirked, "_Maybe_."

They climbed to the tower's roof, Darcy dropping to her knees by the lightning spire and pulling the strap of her bag over her head before opening it, and Bucky arched a brow at the bundle of rope she produced, "What are you _doing_?"

The smirk was still firmly planted on her face, "It's time to raise the flag."

She was done a few minutes later, "Come on," she tugged Bucky aside. "Now we have to hide."

"Up here?" He was really starting to wonder _what_ he was doing, and tamped the feelings back down. "He's going to find you."

"Sort of the point. Plus, I need to get evidence for Natasha," she waved her phone as she crouched behind a low wall. "Well come _on!_ He'll know something's up if he sees you before he sees his pants."

Clint did _not_ see them as he burst out onto the roof a few minutes later, and Bucky watched Darcy as she snapped pictures of him gaping up at the flag she fashioned out of his pants and the rope, and then he pulled an arrow out of the quiver still hanging off his back, shooting through the knot, and eventually the pants fluttered back down to the patio.

"Oh perfect!" She squealed quietly as she flipped through the stills she snapped while her phone also videoed the entire thing, and wasn't modern technology a wonderful thing. "Totally Instagram worthy. I am going to break the Internet faster than Kim Kardashian and _her_ butt."

Bucky didn't get the reference—nor did he want to know who Kim Kardashian was, really—and looked down at the picture she picked, of Barton pulling back the bowstring, the entirety of his backside in his purple briefs taking up the left side of the frame.

His pants, while slightly blurry, fluttered in the top right corner.

"And we'll add the Hudson filter," Darcy muttered under her breath as she dictated the caption she was typing. "Just another day in Crazy Town #Ipledgeallegiancetodatass #yourewelcomeworld #thismakesusevenBarton. Perfect!"

"Uh, Darcy?"

She looked up from her phone, which was already flashing with Instagram notifications, "Yeah?"

Bucky nodded with his chin, and Darcy looked over to see a murderous Clint—now with pants—stomping across the rooftop toward them, "Looks like you've been found out."

"And that's my cue," she chirped and shoved her phone in her back pocket before waving at Clint. "Catch me if you can, loser!"

She darted away, and Bucky arched a brow when Clint glared at him before he took off after her.

Alone on the roof, he shook his head, "What the hell?" He muttered under his breath before making his way back inside.

**Present Day, Santa Barbara Airport**

When the jet set down on the tarmac a couple hours later, Darcy swiped her phone off the armrest of the lounger she was curled up on near the front of the cabin, opened Twitter, and tapped out, "Thx 4 letting me borrow the jet IAmIronMan #ProofThatTonyStarkHasAHeart"

Not even thirty seconds later, which meant the team was probably en route to Shanghai to do whatever it was that they were going to do, her phone chirped, and she saw: " ItsMewMew always happy to help my friends. How was the flight? #jointhemilehighclub? #tropesontropesontropes #upallnighttogetBucky"

Just as she replied with, "I see what you did there, IAmIronMan", CEO_VPP, aka Pepper Potts, who was probably bored out of her mind in whatever meeting she was in, tweeted, " IAmIronMan Tony NO! ItsMewMew I am so, so sorry! StevenGRogers TAKE HIS PHONE!"

Darcy barked a laugh under her breath as she typed back, " IAmIronMan CEP_VPP StevenGRogers don't worry, #upallnighttogetBucky's virtue is safe. For now ;-)"

From the other side of the cabin, she heard Bucky snort, and she looked to the couch where he hadn't moved from for the entirety of the flight, saw him eyeing his tablet, and her jaw dropped a little, "You little sneak! You have JARVIS monitor your hashtag for you, don't you?"

"I neither confirm or deny it, Lewis," he smirked as he sat up and put the tablet back in his bag. "And for the record, I _have_ heard the song, and I think it's a damn stupid hashtag."

She winked, "Join Twitter and I can start tagging you properly."

"Not gonna happen."

"Then you, my friend, are just going to have to deal. Anyway, #upallnighttogetBucky was _perfect_ when Steve and Sam were trying to track you down."

She looked back down at her phone, swiping back into Twitter, and tapping out, " Edwin_J, you are SUCH a sneak #secretssecretsarenofun"

Seconds later, her phone pinged again: " ItsMewMew, I have no idea what you could possibly be referring to".

The plane finished taxiing a few minutes later, and Darcy squared her shoulders as they waited for the two flight attendants took care of the doors, "I can do this," she muttered. "I survived godly temper tantrums and genocidal robots, I can survive ten days with my mother."

"Maybe you're blowing things out of proportion a little bit?" Bucky shrugged when she jumped a little. "You haven't seen her since before Thor, right? Maybe she's changed."

She favored him with a bland look that she definitely picked up from spending too much time with Natasha, Pepper, and Maria, "I lived with her for seventeen years. You will see."

The doors opened, and they squinted a bit at the bright sunlight as they made their way down the staircase and out to the tarmac on the private section of the airstrip, the Stark Industries airline staffers offloading the luggage from the plane.

When her eyes adjusted to the midday brightness, she arched a brow at the cherry red convertible waiting with the top down a few feet away, "Who does Tony think I am, Scott Summers?" She muttered as she accepted the keys from the waiting attendant and slid into the driver's seat.

"You don't have that big a stick up your butt," Bucky muttered as he rounded the car and slipped in on the passenger side.

Fishing her sunglasses out of her messenger bag, she pushed them on her face before tossing the bag on Bucky's lap, "You stare at my butt! That's so cute!"

He put on his own sunglasses, and then went back to fiddling with his leather gloves, "Darcy?"

Pushing her glasses up, she arched a brow, "Yes Bucky?"

"Shut up and drive."

Laughing, she pealed out of the airport property, and the streets were mostly empty as she drove into town, muttering over the sounds of traffic that they were going to make a quick stop before heading to the house, because she was in desperate need of some caffeine.

"I promise, it'll make me slightly less bitchy for a few more hours before Mom decides to crack open the wine. We love our wine. Wine is super important."

He snorted, "I'm shocked."

They were waiting in the world's longest line at a drive-through Starbucks just off the 101 freeway, and Bucky sighed as he stretched out his legs, slumping in his seat as they waited for the cars ahead of them to move, "Are you sure this is all right? It's so last minute, I don't know what Steve is thinking."

Darcy waved a dismissive hand, "The Generalissima is literally over the moon that her darling daughter is finally bringing someone home. I'm surprised we haven't heard her shouting from the rooftops all the way in New York."

He bristled, "She knows we're not, you know, together, right?"

"It doesn't matter, you're a bona fide American Hero," she took her foot off the gas for a few seconds, and then stopped again behind the powder blue Prius in front of them. "She's pretty much put out a city newsletter. Like seriously, if you want to find something out from her, she will literally tell you _everything_ you wanted to know, _and_ everything you didn't. The woman can't keep a secret to save her life."

He arched a brow, turning a little and propping his elbow on the door, and she snickered, "I may or may not have told her I was gay before I flew out to Culver, just to see what happened."

"_Seriously_?"

"Annie, my older sister, may or may not have been letting me sneak some of her pomegranate martinis at her birthday dinner, which was the week before I left, and I was in a _huge _mood and wasn't thinking about what I was saying. I was young and stupid and it's not something I'm particularly proud of. It's probably going to bite me in the ass at least once while we're here. I am aware and slightly mentally prepared for this."

She flapped her hands against the steering wheel and shook her head, "And it's not like I wasn't right; the second I stepped off the plane for winter break, it was like the LGBTQ threw up on the entire town. Her security clearance is literally negative. Pepper and Maria actually had to figure out a level _just_ for her inability to keep her mouth shut."

Eventually, Darcy _finally_ pulled up to the pick-up window and accepted her venti Java Chip Frappuccino, with extra chips and whip, and Bucky's grande latte from the barista, "I _swear_," she muttered, taking a long sip before shoving the drink in the cup holder. "That is the _slowest_ Starbucks in the entire country, whether it's the morning rush or not!"

It was a little humid as Darcy drove into the hills, turning into a small housing development with a view of the ocean on the other side of the highway, "Here we are," she murmured as she pulled into the driveway of the two-story house at the end of the cul-du-sac. "Casa Lewis. Looks like Mom's the only one home. _Great_."

"You're _so_ dramatic," he snorted as she popped the trunk and he grabbed their bags, handing Darcy her soft-sided laptop case. "Nice place."

She pushed her sunglasses on the top of her head and turned to face it, "It's Mom's pride and joy. When my parents bought it, it hasn't been renovated since, well, _your_ days. They gutted it," she nudged his shoulder. "Come on. We might as well get this over with."

"It's going to be _fine_."

They made their way up the front walkway, past the iron gate wreathed in silver tinsel that led to a small patio, and Darcy paused as she dug her keys from the depths of her messenger bag, "You're not allergic to cats, are you?"

He leveled her with a bland look, "I'm not allergic to _anything_ anymore. Quit stalling."

"You're so mean to me," she smirked as she unlocked the deadbolt with a flip of her wrist.

Pushing the door open, they stepped into a small foyer, and Darcy dropped both bags on a padded bench wrapped in the same and silver tinsel with some blue streaked through it, which was in front of the wall directly across from them, while Bucky left the suitcases in front of it while she shut the door, "Mom! You darling spawn has returned!"

"Welcome home honey!" A high voice called from deeper in the house. "I'm on a conference call with council, but make yourself at home!"

She rolled her eyes, "She's been on the school district's PTA council since Annie was in kindergarten," she nodded toward the hall that led to the living room. "We'll have at least twenty minutes before she surfaces."

There was a wall of framed family photos in the hall, and Bucky edged his way over, his brow arched when he spied someone familiar, "You," he cleared his throat, looking from an old school photo of a young girl standing on a grass lawn and back to Darcy. "You went to private school?"

Again, she rolled her eyes, nudging him past a staircase wrapped in a bright green garland and a string of soft white lights, "If you even think about texting those pictures to Tony, I will tear your arm off and beat you with it."

He grinned, and she resisted the urge to smack him upside the head.

"You must be Bucky Barnes! Welcome! We're so glad you could spend the holiday with us."

Charlene Lewis was slightly taller than her middle daughter, with dyed blonde hair and brown eyes, and the skinny woman was bustling about the massive kitchen, stacking three massive binders stuffed with multi-colored papers on top of one another before moving around the granite-topped island to give Darcy a hug.

Pleasantries were exchanged quickly enough, Charlene talking a mile a minute as she ushered them on the wooden stools tucked under the island before she shuffled over to the massive refrigerator and grabbed a water pitcher.

"So how was the flight? It's so nice that Tony Stark let you borrow his jet."

Bucky snorted, and Darcy translated, "Nice is one word for it. Pepper made him do it is another."

"Now _that _sounds like the Tony Stark who used to tear up Malibu in those fancy sports cars of his," Charlene laughed as she pulled a pair of glasses down from one of the upper cabinets.

"Well he still has_ those_," she wrinkled her nose as she fiddled one of the six menorahs clustered on the right side of the island, resting on wide sheets of aluminum foil. "Which he refuses to share with anyone."

"Because he remembers happened the night you met Thor."

Darcy smacked his shoulder, then shook her hand out when she remembered it was the metal one, which_ actually_ hurt, "Jerk, that was all Jane's fault."

"Oh and how is Jane?" Charlene wondered as produced a vegetable platter from the refrigerator and placed it between them. "She's still dating that alien from Andromeda, right?"

"Thor's from _Asgard_, Mom. Andromeda is a star system and a minor Harry Potter character."

Bucky was only half listening as Darcy tried to explain the minutia of actual alien planets versus star clusters when he felt something brush against his right leg, and he resisted the urge to palm the knife at his back as he looked down and saw a bright orange tabby going to town on his bootlaces, "Um."

Breaking off mid-sentence, Darcy leaned back and followed his gaze, "Oh hey, that's Cat, the family beast," she leaned down and hooked an arm around the animal's middle, and Cat mewed before settling on Darcy's lap and started licking her jeans. "Sometimes we're not sure if she knows she's a dog or not. She's Annie's first little monster."

Brows furrowing, she looked around, narrowing her eyes toward the back yard, "Speak of the devil, where _is_ Annie, anyway?"

"At the park with Mara," Charlene sounded like she was surprised Darcy _didn't_ know that.

"Oh, so she's actually spending time with her daughter for once? Wow. Good for her."

Charlene pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest, "Darcy! She's having a rough time right now," she snapped as she made her way toward the pantry. "You've _got_ to go easy on her."

"Oh yeah? Well I found out my last boyfriend was a Nazi and got the hell over it pretty damn quickly," she muttered under her breath before chewing viciously on a stalk of hummus-dipped celery, and then flinched when Bucky stilled, his eyes wide and questioning.

As she fought for what to say next, Charlene broke the spell as she called out, "Did you say something Darcy?"

"Nothing Mom," she turned to Bucky and mouthed, "I'll tell you later."

Later turned out to be about an hour after they arrived, when Annie and Mara got home from the park, followed shortly after by Darcy's dad Greg returning with her younger sister Marley, fresh from her last day of school before winter vacation, and Darcy led Bucky upstairs to her room, a small space at the end of the hall with its own bathroom.

"A Nazi," he murmured after she shut the door behind them. "You meant Hydra."

Wincing, because _of course_ he remembered, she threw her computer bag on her bed, "It's no big deal, really," she crossed her arms over her chest as she looked out the window. "Thor crushed him into paste. After I tased him, of course."

"Oh, of course."

Sighing, she flopped on her bed, "I never told you because I didn't want to shellac you in feels. You have enough of your own. Jane and I had like, weeks of boxed-wine nights to get me over it. Like I said, I'm good."

He propped himself against the bookshelf next to her closet, "But your sister hasn't bounced back like you did?"

With a nod, she rolled over and kicked her legs up behind her, "Long story short, I'm the mythical creature commonly known as the middle child who happens to be the family favorite," she said lowly when she heard footsteps echo in the hallway. "We can thank Annie for being, well, _Annie_, for my unexpected promotion."

"How so?"

"For _all_ the years I was growing up, she was the perfect one, getting her MBA and marrying a future pediatric heart surgeon within months of graduating from freaking _Yale_, but then, when she was eight months pregnant with Mara, she found out what we all knew."

He arched a brow, "And that was?"

"Nate was definitely, _definitely_ using her as his beard," she snorted. "The divorce was quick and quiet, and now Annie lives here with Mom and Dad and continues to freeload off them while they raise Mara and Marley. These days, she's freaking out because Natie and his boyfriend are tying the knot next spring."

"That's unfortunate."

She shrugged, "Natie and Mark are one of the cutest, most stable couples I've ever seen. I have very little sympathy for the entire clusterfuck."

"I know," he smirked. "I've seen you put up with Barton before his first cup of coffee."

Tossing a grin back at him, she reached back and pulled her phone from her pocket, but looked back up at him when his head snapped in the direction of the door and he narrowed his eyes.

Seconds later, there was a light tap, "Darcy?"

She rolled back onto her back with a flip of her hips and sat up, "Halt, who goes there?"

The door opened a fraction, and Darcy's twelve-year-old clone Marley popped her head inside, her eyes flaring wide a little bit when they landed on Bucky, "Hello," she looked back at Darcy again. "Hi."

"Hey Kid, what's up?"

"Mom wants to know if you guys are cool with going to Loony Tuna for dinner tonight. She has holiday cookies to drop off for Mr. and Mrs. Taekada, which I still think is ironic because we basically bankroll their yearly vacations with how much food we buy from them."

"Oh my god, do you have to ask?" She looked over her shoulder. "Loony Tuna is, no lie, the best sushi restaurant on the west coast. Tony's fancy holes in the wall ain't got nothing on this place."

Marley snorted, "That is not remotely grammatically correct."

Wrinkling her nose, Darcy threw one of the decorative pillows resting at the head of her bed—Charlene's doing, definitely—at her, and in a rare moment of good aim, it smacked Marley in the face.

"Ugh, whatever," Marley muttered, kicking the pillow back in Darcy's room before retreating into the hallway.

Darcy laughed, "Wow, she is _such_ a preteen. That's freaking hilarious," she tapped her chin. "What were you even like as a teenager?"

"Something tells me I should be glad I don't really remember."

"Bummer," her grin turned wicked. "Guess I'll have to ask Steve."

"Don't you dare."

Looney Tuna was a narrow restaurant with a long sushi bar on the right side and a row of two-tops along the left wall, with a slightly more open area at the back that had a few larger tables.

Darcy was perched at the edge of the bench in their booth, leaving the space next to her for Bucky, who had excused himself and headed toward the restroom as soon as they arrived, but was really ensuring that the building was easy enough to escape in case something went wrong.

But she wasn't about to mention that part to the rest of her family, Mara squashed between her and Annie to her left, while Marley sat on the far side, with Greg and Charlene in the middle.

He was back minutes later, his eyes scanning the restaurant and focusing for a moment on the curtained entrance to the tiny kitchen, and then to the pair of couples sitting at the front of the restaurant before he made his way over and sat down.

"Everything good?" Darcy murmured out of the corner of her mouth, her mother momentarily distracted by the menu.

Picking up his own menu, he nodded, "It'll be fine."

"So Bucky, what do you do, when you're around Stark Tower?"

Darcy resisted the urge to flinch, because there really wasn't a way to answer that question, but Bucky just said, "Situational evaluations. I also assist some of the Avengers with their training."

"And how exactly did you meet _Darcy_?" Annie asked without looking up from her phone, while Mara's eyes glazed over as she watched a children's show on the tablet propped up in front of her.

Arching a brow, Bucky looked down at Darcy, and she grinned, "I ran into him in the gym, and volunteered him to help me with a project."

While Charlene seemed to have taken that at face value, Greg looked at them both a little skeptically before he shrugged, "Darcy, do you often collaborate with the Avengers on their projects?"

"Well, Natasha hasn't let me cook with her since the incident with the chicken," she shrugged, elbowing Bucky in the side when he snorted back a laugh. "Mostly I just help decipher Jane's handwriting for Stark and Doctor Banner."

Neither of her parents knew what to say to that, and it wasn't like Darcy could _explain_, but Marley saved the day, almost, "Darcy, are you excited about tomorrow?"

She winked, "You know how much I love commemorating the first night of a grand, oil-themed coincidence, with fire, presents, and chocolate money."

Marley rolled her eyes back, "No dork, we're going to _camp_ tomorrow. Isn't that great? All the counselors from your days are coming back, so you'll get to see all your friends."

"What?" She looked at Charlene. "_What_?"

"The camp reunion coincides with the first night of Chanukah this year, so we thought we'd go up. I called Dennis and told him we'd be bringing along a guest. I told you this, I definitely did."

Darcy resisted the urge to throw her chopsticks, "I don't think you did," she muttered, glancing at her dad out of the corner of her eye, but all Greg did was shrug. "But whatever. _Awesome_."

Just as their miso soups arrived, Darcy looked up at Bucky, "Please tell me you packed a white shirt. Do you even own white? It's commonly known as the opposite color to black, the color you wear like, daily."

He snorted, and Darcy sipped at her soup, only to cough up a lung when she swallowed a massive piece of wasabi that _somehow_ ended up in her bowl.

"Jerk," she coughed, draining her water, which didn't remotely help the burning that seared the back of her tongue and all the way down her throat, and pointedly switched out her bowl of soup for his.

Midway through the meal saw Darcy dismantling an epic number of sushi rolls while Marley tried to convince Mary that the little balls of wasabi on their plates tasted just like Play Doh.

Bucky was not at all surprised when Darcy leaned over and muttered out of the side of her mouth that she tried the same tricks on Marley when she was younger.

Then, she shifted half her tuna roll onto his plate with her chopsticks, "Best roll in town," she snagged a piece of teriyaki chicken and rice from his plate and popped it in her mouth. "That's not bad either."

He shifted his plate away, "And it's _mine_."

Charlene leaned forward and was admonishing her youngest daughter when a petite Asian woman emerged from the kitchen and made her way over to their table, "The entire Lewis family? It's been so long!"

"Hi Mrs. T," Darcy waved at Mrs. Taekada with the hand still holding her wooden chopsticks. "How's Mary doing?"

"Wonderful!" Her accent was thick. "She's transferring to UCLA in the spring, studying film."

Mrs. Taekada blinked when she realized Bucky was sitting next to Darcy, "Ms. Darcy, is this your boyfriend?" She glanced around and pitched her voice low. "Your mother mentioned you were," she looked around again. "Liked _girls_."

While Annie smothered a laugh behind her cupped hands, Darcy gave Bucky a pointed look that shouted 'I told you so' before she plastered a smile on her face, "Nah, Mrs. T, this is Bucky. He came with me from New York."

Darcy's eyes rounded when Mrs. Taekada pinched Bucky's cheek, and she clamped a hand around his wrist, "Well he's very handsome," she went on, not knowing how dangerous that almost was. "You should hold onto him!"

Thankfully, she turned to Charlene and thanked her again for the holiday cookie delivery, and how it was exciting that Darcy was back from her wonderful life in New York, before she shuffled back to the kitchen.

After a minute, Darcy finally felt the shuddering plates in Bucky's arm settle, and let him go, "Sorry the dossiers JARVIS gave you didn't tell you the cheek pinching was more likely to come from Mrs. T than anyone from my family."

"Oh my god that was classic!" Annie gushed. "I can't believe people still think you're a lesbian Darcy!"

She glared over Mara's head, "And _you're_ not helping."

"What's a lesbian?" Mara asked, tugging on the sleeve of Darcy's sweater with a sticky, rice-covered hand.

"Ask your mother."

Annie mouthed, "I hate you so much," over Mara's head before trying to distract her with an offer of dessert."

After she finished eating her weight in salmon skin hand rolls, Greg pulled Darcy aside when they got home, the rest of the family and Bucky going ahead of them and into the living room, "What's up dude?"

Greg glanced up to the staircase Bucky disappeared to, "I'm still not exactly thrilled that you're insisting he stay with you in your room."

She waved a hand before tugging him through the double doors and into the formal living room, "It's not like we're _sleeping together_, Dad, I swear. All Bucky does is nap, really. He's just going to do is Twilight me for a little while because he's a dork, and then watch some bootleg broadcast of Aussie-Rules Football until he passes out."

Greg rolled his eyes, "That still doesn't make me feel much better. You know, he's been in the news a lot lately."

"And I've told you like, eight hundred times that watching the news is a momentously _bad_ idea, _especially_ when it's Avengers-related," she patted his arm. "It's going to be fine."

"Then why don't you bunk with Marley while you're here?"

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair, "Because on the off chance, like, I _swear_ it's extremely unlikely, that something _does_ happen, he has a bad night, _something_, it's better that I actually be with him and help talk him down."

"And _you_ can do that? Really?"

"Yes Dad, I can."


	3. Chapter 3

**Seven Months Ago, Stark Tower Common Kitchen**

"So you don't just haunt the gym. Will wonders never cease?"

Bucky stilled, took a breath, and then looked over to Darcy, his narrowed eyes tracking her as she padded into the kitchen from the hall that led from the elevators, her feet bare and the slaps echoed through the quiet space.

She winced at the bright kitchen lights, "Did I startle you?"

"I didn't think anyone was awake."

"Jane, Tony, and Bruce are on hour fifty-two of epic science bender number I don't even know anymore. I've sent myself for snacks since I'm pretty sure none of us have eaten anything other than Dum-E's weird energy shakes in like, thirteen, fourteen hours? I'm not really sure."

Tilting his head, Bucky blinked, "That is a long time."

Darcy padded over to the refrigerator and started rifling through the drawers, "Comes with the territory. At least we won't be going on any unexpected midnight jaunts through the desert on a moment's notice. As much as I miss New Mexico sometimes, I do _not_ miss that."

He let her voice wash over him as she chattered on about what was happening down in the lab, only stopping when she brought a bundle of vegetables to the island he was sitting at and noticed the tablet in his hands, "Any good reading?"

"Steve's Netflix account."

"Is the password still 'password'?" Darcy winked as she pulled a baby carrot from the half-full bag and nibbled on it. "Someone needs to teach that man some sense. And basic Internet security."

Bucky snorted, "Didn't work when we were kids, doubt it's going to work now."

Laughing, she grabbed a platter from the cabinet next to the sink, "Find anything watch-worthy?"

"I'm not sure," he shrugged, turning the tablet so she could see the list of suggestions the app created for Steve. "I don't really want to watch anything, uh, I don't really know what I'm looking for."

"You want something inane to take your mind off your mind?"

One shoulder lifted, and then dropped again.

Darcy peered back at the suggestions—mostly post-war documentaries, with one or two standup comedy shows that she didn't exactly expect to see, because Jeff Dunham, really? That must have been Sam's idea or something—and she flipped through them before paging through the rest of the app.

"How about this," she poured some more carrots onto the tray before opening the carton of pre-cut celery. "Let me go drop this off for my terrible trio, and then I'll pull some suggestions from my queue that I use when I try to forget I live in a nut-house."

"You should sleep if they're not going to miss you."

She waved a dismissive hand, then opened a small carton of dip and shoved it between the carrots and tiny tomatoes, "You have no idea how much coffee I've had. At this rate, I probably won't be able to sleep for another day and a half."

Bucky looked at her for a long minute—he hadn't seen much of her since the incident with Barton's pants and the Internet explosion that followed, mostly because he'd spent the last week or so in his apartment using some of the meditation techniques Bruce taught him instead—and finally nodded once, "All right."

Ten minutes later, Darcy was back, her return heralded by aggravated mutterings under her breath about Dum-E and Butterfingers, who apparently attacked her with a fire extinguisher when she tried to feed their master.

"I do _not_ know how Pepper puts up with him," she grunted as she flopped on the far end of the couch while JARVIS logged her into her Netflix account on the giant flat screen across from them.

Wordlessly, he tilted his head, but Darcy shook hers back as she grabbed the remote and started flipping through her saved list, "So you want something inane, borderline hilarious?"

"I think so."

She kept clicking, and finally stopped on one, grinning wide as she clicked on it, "Oh, now this is perfect!"

Narrowing his eyes, Bucky took in the title, "_Troop Beverly Hills_?"

"Wealthy housewife going through a divorce ends up becoming leader of her daughter's Girl Scout troop," she nodded brightly. "I used to watch this movie like, once a week on VHS when I was a kid. It's amazing."

"Not sure that's really my type."

With a grin and a dismissive wave, she nodded, "And we can watch _A Knight's Tale_ too. It's slightly more manly, but just as ridiculous."

He blinked, "Is both all right?"

"Both is awesome."

_Troop Beverly Hills _was just the right amount of inane and insane, in Darcy's opinion, as she watched Bucky out of the corner of her eye as he sat straight and watched the movie with wide, unmoving eyes, and they moved seamlessly over to _A Knight's Tale_ just as the credits to the first movie started rolling.

Darcy tried to stay awake, she really did, but after three or four or five consecutive days spent moving and going and doing, sitting for so long on the soft couch with a warm, heavy afghan draped over her legs, lulled her right to sleep just as Heath Ledger's William Thatcher was strolling through Rouen and discovered the fascinating lady Jocelyn as she walked to church.

Next thing she knew, she was yanked back to consciousness with something cool pressing hard to her neck and a weight bearing down on her chest, "Wha-" she was cut off when the coolness of what was definitely Bucky's metal hand tightened.

"Shut up."

She stilled, barely breathed as she took in the slightly vacant look that made his eyes look black in the room's dimness, and after a minute swallowed against his grip, "You're in Stark Tower. Take a second."

The seconds dragged on for what _had_ to be long minutes until awareness finally came back to Bucky, and he snatched his hands away and dropped back to the far end of the couch, his eyes wide, "_Shit_, sorry."

Darcy held her hands at her sides as she sat up, "Are you all right?"

"I just went at you with a _knife_."

"Trust me, I've totally been through worse," she put a hand up and shook her head to stall his upcoming question. "Rule Two: Not to worry."

For a long minute, he didn't say anything, and then he blinked, "What's rule one?"

She tilted her head, her face twisting as she shrugged, "You know, I've never really thought to ask. It's probably irrelevant."

Swallowing hard, he watched her for a minute before returning the knife to the holster at his back and standing up, "I have to go. Sorry."

Bucky bolted out, leaving Darcy in the dark living room, her eyes tracking him as he disappeared around a corner.

**Present Day, The Morning Of The First Night Of Chanukah (Also Erev Shabbat)**

Standing in the baggy t-shirt and flannel pants she'd gone to sleep in and glaring down at the clothes strewn across her unmade bed, a dissatisfied grunt escaped Darcy's throat as she picked up a black skirt in one hand and a pair of jeans in the other.

"No matter how much you glare, they're not going to spontaneously catch fire."

Darcy lowered the garments and turned her glare to the man standing in the doorway to her bathroom, his still shaggy hair damp, chest bare, and his jeans hanging off the sharp lines of his hips.

_Oh crap_.

She kept glaring as a droplet of water fell from his hair, glanced off his shoulder and trailed down the center of his chest, and winced as she finally tore her gaze away, only to look down at Cat as she stretched across the bed, shedding orange fur over her clothes, "Ugh," she muttered as she tossed the clothes in her hands away. "Uh, what did you say Bucky? I got distracted."

Chuckling quietly, he moved into the room, and Cat jumped across Darcy's bed and landed on the floor in front of him, took a second to sniff at his right ankle, and then she sat down on his foot, "Weird cat."

With an exaggerated groan, Darcy flopped face-first on top of the pile of clothes, her voice muffled as she wailed, "_What am I supposed to wear? Ugh!_"

"Jeans, shirt, and a blazer?" He suggested as he put on his own white shirt, because apparently everyone was supposed to wear at least one white garment since it was not just the first night of Chanukah, but also Shabbat.

She groaned again, "It's not the same for women," she groused as he tried to suffocate herself on the lurid green Hulk t-shirt she bought off the street some months ago so show support for Bruce after General Ross started whining for his arrest _again_. "I can't even right now."

Rolling his eyes, Bucky nudged Cat off his foot, the cat letting out an irate mew before she jumped up onto the wingback in the corner of the room and settled in for a nap, and he padded over to the bed, poking at Darcy until she swatted his hand away, "You're the worst!"

"You're a nuisance," he muttered, until something in the pile hanging half off the far end of the bed caught his eye, and he grabbed it. "Will this work?"

Darcy's head popped up, and she swiped her jeans off the back of her neck, eyes flaring wide when she saw the loose white tank top hanging off his fingers, "Oh my god, you are _so_ my hero!" She sat up and grabbed it. "Skinny jeans, this, a shmata, and my leather jacket. This I can do. Yes!"

"Shmata?"

She grabbed the rest of her outfit, draping the clothes over her left arm, "It's Yiddish, pretty much means rag."

"I _know_."

Kicking her boots out of her closet, she arched a brow, "You do?"

Bucky favored her with a bland look, and she waved a hand as he brain caught up with her words, "Oh right, right. You spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe back in the ye olde. Right."

"Well," he shrugged. "That is one way to explain it."

Glancing at the clock, she dashed into the bathroom to change, because if there was one thing about going _anywhere_ with the Lewis family, they'd be leaving three hours earlier than they needed to in order to be the first to arrive at their destination.

Which helped to make her a _super awkward _wallflower at parties when she was little.

All was quiet on the other side of the door, which Darcy expected, since Bucky wasn't inclined to chatter at Cat like she used to when she got ready, but what she didn't expect was to see him sitting on the armchair with the animal sprawled out on his lap as he ran a hand over her fur.

Also, he was apparently in the middle of a staring contest with Mara, who was perched on top of the pillows at the head of Darcy's bed, her chin in her hands as she stared back with wide, unblinking brown eyes.

She cleared her throat, but neither looked away, "Mara," she drew out the syllables, and her niece finally blinked and looked over.

"You made me _lose_!" She whined. "Meanie."

Darcy arched a brow as she rifled through her tattered makeup bag, "I'm pretty sure he was good to go for at least another twenty minutes," she glanced over her shoulder at the look on his face, and amended. "Okay fine, fifteen."

In the middle of trying not to poke her eye out with her eyeliner, Darcy heard Mara huff, and she looked at her through the reflection in the closet's mirrored door, "Yes?" she drawled. "You know, my psychic powers are on the fritz at the moment, so you're going to have to tell me what you're thinking at me."

"Can Marley and I ride to camp in your car? _Please, please, please_?"

She rolled her eyes and glanced at Bucky to make a face at him, but saw he was distracted by Cat, who had discovered his metal hand and was batting her paws at his fingers, trying to get her claws around them and drag them to her mouth, "Are your Mom and I'm-Too-Young-To-Be-Called-Nana cool with it?"

That got a snorted laugh out of him, while Mara nodded, her hands cupped over her mouth to stifle her own giggles, "They said if you and Bucky were okay with it that we could."

"I'm good," Bucky piped up.

"Well then," she shrugged. "Go tell Marles the good news."

With an ear-shattering squeal, Mara hopped off Darcy's bed, flinging her tiny arms around her waist, "_Thank you!_"

Making a face as Mara scarpered out of the room, her shouts for Marley echoing through the halls, Darcy leaned against her closet door, "At least they've both grown out of the age where they don't stop talking, _ever_. I had to deal with Marles when she was like that, and oh my god if toddlers aren't the best form of birth control _ever_, I don't know what is."

"You don't want children?"

She shrugged as she went finished lining her right eye, "Well, our lifestyle isn't exactly conducive to a safe environment for a child to grow up in, not that I can really explain that to Mom without her flipping a shit. But I've never wanted them anyway. They're expensive. And time consuming. Some people just don't have it, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of them."

For long minutes, Bucky was quiet, and she watched out of the corner of her eye as he stared down at Cat's back while she continued to play with his hand, and something that felt like guilt pooled in her stomach at the strange look on his face.

"I think I might have wanted kids, once."

Flinching, she almost stabbed herself in the eye with her mascara wand, "Oh."

What the hell else was she supposed to say to something like that?

After a minute, he shook his head, slumping in the chair so Cat could crawl up his chest, "The old me may have. Things are different now."

She _really_ didn't know what to say to that.

Sometimes she was _really_ out of her depth with these people.

The mood was a little lighter by the time they got on the road.

Thank _god_.

There wasn't a lot of traffic on the highway since it was the middle of winter, and while yes, it was California, which didn't have real weather like most other states did, but very few people were headed out to the beach, in favor of going to the mountains courtesy of some early-season snowfall.

Darcy pulled into the left-turn lane, and pointed to a small blue building on the far side of the street she was waiting to turn into, "That's the senior staff's favorite biker bar. Actually, it's really everyone's favorite biker bar. I had my first beer there back when I thought being a counselor in training was a good idea."

"A biker bar across the street from a children's summer camp?"

She shrugged one shoulder, "Well yeah. The campers never get to go there, but the bikers, as a whole, are pretty decent. Once, one of the counselors got a beer on his hour off, and then stupidly decided to come back to camp. He was fired, because contrary to popular belief, the directors aren't stupid, and you actually need to be sober when you're around children here."

The road finally cleared, and Darcy turned into the narrow street that went up a small hill that overlooked the canyon the sprawling camp was tucked into, with small clusters of buildings interspersed around wide open lawns and tall eucalyptus trees bordering the gaping creek that cut down the middle and led toward the highway underpass.

Darcy drove through the gate, and followed the road around a large building, and down a hill into a small parking lot, "And here we are Camp Shalom Alechem," she murmured as she cut the ignition. "Bucky, get ready, because things are about to get weird."

Marley snorted as she hopped out of the car, "You're so dramatic Darcy."

"But I am _so_ right."

Her parents and Annie were getting out of the car parked a few spots away, while a tall man with a neat blonde ponytail and some absolutely awful, dusty blue Crocs emerged from the buildings on the other side of the pavilion.

"Dennis!" Darcy waved, exaggerating out his name and adding a bit of a whine to the end of it.

"Welcome back, Kid." he said in greeting, giving Darcy a one-armed hug. "You know you guys are _really_ early, right?"

She shrugged and pointed at her parents, "Blame your camp committee board members, I would have liked to sleep in another hour and a half, but _no_."

Mara walked up to Dennis and tugged on the hem of his polo, which had the camp's insignia embroidered on the right side, "Can I _please_ come to camp next summer?" She whined, which she apparently did every time she saw him, and Darcy remembered her doing the same thing before she left to see the world.

Dennis pretended to think about it, "Well, you _are_ turning eight in January, right?"

"Duh!"

"Then I guess that means you can," he looked at Darcy, and then to Bucky. "So you're the mystery guest Charlene called about."

He shrugged a shoulder and put a hand out, "Bucky Barnes."

"Dennis Harris, Camp Director," he shook Bucky's hand and looked at Darcy. "You really are moving up in the world, Kid. But maybe next time you can have Captain America tag along? Kids would eat that up."

She grinned, "At least Bucky's slightly more famous than the last celebrity guest to swing through here," she went on after Bucky's asking eyebrow arch. "Adam Sandler showed up for services once because he was in the neighborhood and knew one of the camp's medical staff."

"Well I can't say I'll be telling any jokes."

Snorting a laugh, Darcy curled her hand around Bucky's arm and tugged him toward one of the footpaths, "And on that note, I'm going to show this one the cabin area and tell him about the time I broke my collarbone while joyriding on a golf cart in the middle of the night."

Looking down at her, he arched a brow, "Really?"

"I am the reason why, among a very long list of things that Dennis keeps posted on a very large piece of poster board on a wall in his office, the camp counselors don't have golf cart privileges anymore."

"Don't forget an after-hours curfew," Dennis called as they walked away.

She nodded brightly, "I made one hell of an impact during the two years I spent working as a counselor."

"Darcy Lewis, you would have given me so much trouble if you'd grown up with Steve and me."

"Damn straight, Bucky Barnes."

They walked up the road, some were paved, some were still dirt, and past an amphitheater of giant stone steps terraced into the hill, "They call it the Teatron," Darcy explained as they moved past the stage. "When Dennis was hired they started using some of the Hebrew equivalents to certain places. I still forget that they call the dining hall the Chadar Ohel."

"So you worked here?"

She nodded as she jumped on a leaf, and it made a satisfying _crunch_ under her boots, "For a couple summers while I was in college because I wanted to come home without actually being home. Then Jane happened."

"You say that a lot."

"Hey, she's the one who needed the intern."

Meandering up the path, they passed the fenced-off pool, a dance platform that, for some strange reason that even Darcy didn't know was covered by a massive wooden yurt, an archery range that would make Clint weep at the sight because it wasn't properly maintained in the off season, and finally turned into the cabin area, "This place isn't easily defensible," Bucky murmured, his eyes scanning the hills that towered over the camp.

"Well yeah, unless you're a camper, Fort Knox, this place is not," she led him to a cluster of unattached cabins at the far end of the cabin area. "This is the Captains Lounge. All the oldest campers live here."

There were six cabins, the girls and boys sides split by the restrooms bungalow, "So we've got Miriam, Leah, and Rachel for the girls, and Abel, Solomon, and Judah for the guys. I have the distinct honor of being one of the only ten girls at this camp, _ever_, to have lived in a boys cabin, since we were placed in Solomon for our Captaincy summer."

He arched a brow, wrinkling his nose as the smell emanating from the septic tank built below the boys' side of the restrooms, "Why?"

"Someone thought it would be a good idea to expand the Captaincy to eight cabins, even though it's been six cabins and sixty kids for the last like, forty-five years," she turned around and pointed to the two buildings at the top of the hill that overlooked the six cabins. "So they decided to make Abel and Abe Captaincy cabins, and Solomon was a girls cabin for one weird ass summer."

"Interesting," he muttered, for lack of anything better to say.

With a snort, Darcy nodded to the hill just past a cabin with a wooden board that was decoupaged with the word Judah in blue and white scraps of paper, "Come on up here. You'll love the view."

The dirt path rounded up over the cabin area and led to a lookout point that encompassed the entire camp and the ocean on the other side of the road, and at the far end was an elevated platform bordered by rocks at the base that were painted in a rainbow of neon colors with pieces of mirror cemented into the gaps.

"Nice place," he murmured, the wind ruffling his hair as Darcy hopped up onto the rocky platform, drawing pictures in the dirt with the toe of her boot. "Lot of illicit camper mingling go on up here at night?"

She snorted, "You have _no_ idea. I actually," she broke off, her face falling as she shook her head. "No, never mind."

Sitting down next to her, he nudged her with his elbow, "What?"

Darcy swallowed at the lump in her throat, shaking her head as she looked at the sunlight shimmering off the calm waters, "When I was little," she said, but Bucky got the feeling that it was a different story that she had started. "I always thought I'd get married up here. Then I realized how damn stupid that sounds."

"This place means a lot to you. That's not stupid."

"But that's not it," she smiled a little, leaning into the arm he slung over her shoulders. "Sure I have some great memories from this place, but some of my other experiences were pretty fucking terrible. Not as bad as crazy robots or demigods having temper tantrums, but still pretty shitty."

He squeezed her upper arm, "Yeah?"

"You may or may not remember, but teenage girls are _really_ awful when they want to be."

Snorting, he shook his head, "As much as some things change, a lot just doesn't."

"Pretty much," she tapped his arm and slipped out of his easy grip, crossing her arms over her chest as she took a step over to the old wooden railing built into the ledge and leaned against one of the posts.

Memories whirled through her mind of the one stupid night when she was fourteen and she snuck out of her cabin late at night to meet one of the older campers at this damn spot, her heart warring because despite it all, this was _still_ one of her favorite places in the world.

What things she ended up doing with that boy—she didn't even remember his name, but she definitely could still see his face in her mind—private, personal, and fledgling explorations into sexuality, became the subject of everyone's excited hushed whispers for the last two weeks of the summer.

She almost didn't come back for Captaincy after that.

"Darcy?"

Shaken out of her thoughts, she looked up and saw Bucky next to her, and there was something in his eyes that she couldn't quite figure out as he cupped hand around her shoulder and leaned in, brushing his lips against hers.

It was a quick, easy press, his thumb tracing circles against her shoulder, "Better memory?" He murmured as he shifted back half a step.

"Uh yeah," she resisted the urge to brush her fingertips against her tingling lower lip, and grinned. "_Much _better."

Her phone chirped, breaking the moment, and Darcy wrinkled her nose as she glared down at the message that flashed across the screen, "Services are starting soon," she murmured, not bothering to hide her disappointment.

But she was selfish, and wanted the moment back, so she held her hand out, "Come on. Let's go do some Jew things."

Grinning back, Bucky took her offered hand and tugged her around to his right side, switching around so he could curl his flesh and blood hand around hers, feel the warmth of her palm against his, and Darcy ran her thumb up and down the back as they walked.


	4. Chapter 4

**Six Months Ago, Stark Tower**

"You know," Darcy drawled as she stepped out to the rooftop patio outside the solarium, shoving sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. "The view is even better from ground level."

"That would mean leaving the building."

Bucky was leaning against the railing, and she stepped up next to him and handed him the second water bottle in her hand, "Which you've been cleared for, for what, three weeks now?"

Sighing, he shook his head, "It's not a good time."

"You're never going to wake up and say to yourself, 'yes today is a good day to talk a walk over to Central Park', you just have to do it," she nudged him gently. "Come on Bucky, it'll be fine."

Clenching his hands to fists—Darcy could hear the left one whir as he held back from leaving imprints into the metal—and he sighed, "I'm not up for a walk through the park."

"Well how do you feel about a walk around the block?" She offered gently, reaching out and hesitating before letting her hand fall back to her side. "One big circle, and we'll technically still be on the property."

After a minute of looking in what she could only guess was Brooklyn's general direction, he looked down at her warily, "You're not going to give up on this, are you?"

Darcy smiled, "Clint bet I couldn't get you to do it, and you know how much I love one-upping him," she nudged his arm. "Come on. I promise I'll share my Magnolia Bakery-themed spoils with you."

Pressing a hand to his chest, Bucky drummed his fingers against his collarbone, "How do I say no to a really good cupcake?"

Her grin broadened, "That's the spirit!"

Two and a half hours later, Darcy was perched cross-legged on the coffee table in her apartment, the box of cupcakes she won from Clint sitting in front of her, while Bucky sat on the couch and nibbled at his own.

"So what did you think?"

"About what?"

Darcy shifted, reaching out with her foot to nudge his knee, "You _know_ what I mean," she gently tugged the wrapping away from the side of the cupcake and took a huge bite. "The outside world. Now that your brain's not addled, what did you think about our ten-minute trip?"

"Twelve."

"What?"

He smirked, "It was twelve minutes around the block."

Rolling her eyes, Darcy snorted, "First trip outside in two months and you focus on how long it took to get back inside. Figured."

"Least you got your cupcakes."

"Well I certainly appreciate your assistance."

"You're welcome, doll."

**Present Day, At Camp**

Darcy kept up a steady stream of chatter as they made their way through the camp—lest she let herself think about things like _oh my god Bucky kissed her_ and _why would he do that_ and _was that supposed to mean something?_

Instead, she told Bucky about the time the staff had a late-night war to find the most creative and ridiculous parking spot on the property, going so far as to detach the gate to park not one but four cars by the pool, park at the top of the Teatron, and even leaving one car on the ancient deck in front of the Chadar Ohel.

By the time they got to the chapel, which was situated on the top of another hill overlooking the ocean, but this one from the front of the property, Darcy was in the middle of a story about how the entire camp was once tricked into thinking they had to sit through a day-long seminar on bus safety, but was really the announcement of the annual camp color war, called Maccabiah.

"So the assistant director at the time, Beth, is just _going off_ on Dennis, which in retrospect was one of the most hilarious things I'd ever seen, and we're all just so disappointed we have to miss Beach Day, when all of a sudden the video changed, and bam, the counselors that were picked as team captains came out from backstage. It was probably the best way to break Maccabiah I've ever seen."

There was a large mezuzah on a post at the top of the steps that led into the chapel, and Darcy tapped it absently as she passed it, and grabbed two white-covered prayer books from the plastic box on a bench to her left.

"Oh my god, Darcy, is that you?"

Blinking, she saw a grinning woman walking over from the rows of wooden benches to her left, "_Dana_?" Her jaw dropped a little when the statuesque brunette wearing a white dress and tall boots nodded excitedly. "Oh my god, hi!"

They hugged, and then Dana put her hands on Darcy's shoulders and looked her up and down, "You look wonderful! Oh wow, it's so great to see you! How have you been?"

"Oh, you know, keeping busy," she grinned and gestured over her shoulder. "This is Bucky."

Dana's hazel eyes went wide as she realized who was standing with Darcy, "So the rumors _are_ true! Oh wow, it's so nice to meet you, I'm Dana Robinson. Darcy was one of my first campers."

"How long ago was that even? I was ten, right?"

"I think so. You're living in New York now? Time sure flies. I can't believe you're all old enough to be adults."

She nodded, "I can barely believe it either. And I'm probably one of the more mature people where I live."

"That's got to be so cool," she hugged Darcy again. "I'm so proud of you."

It might have made Darcy feel a little better to know that people at least _assumed_ she was slightly more successful than just some nanny to a bunch of lunatic scientists, "Thanks Dana."

"You know, I'm going to be in New York in February to scout locations for the expansion of the peanut butter sandwich shop I opened last year in Studio City," she pulled out her phone. "Can I call you? Maybe we can meet for coffee."

They exchanged numbers, and Dana returned to her seat in the front row, handing the second prayer book she picked up to the petite redhead sitting to her left, and Darcy ran into a few more people she knew from her days as a camper before she and Bucky sat down on a bench to the right of the antique wooden bimah, in the row behind her parents, Annie, Marley, and Mara.

"Anything I should know?" Bucky murmured quietly as the rabbi, a short and balding man with a blue and white tallit draped over his shoulders tested the microphone before conferring with a younger man with a guitar hanging off his back.

"The book goes right to left, and if I had to go to services on a consistent basis, it would be Rabbi Daniel's. He's one of the best, and most relatable to secular-skewed young people like me. Oh, and there's a lot of standing and sitting and standing again."

The rabbi and some of the year-round staff members were trying to get the guests to sit, but with the amount of excited shrieks and hugging still ongoing, it was probably going to take a few more minutes.

Darcy nodded to the hill to their right, "One year, there was a guest rabbi from a temple on San Diego, and she was giving the sermon at Tefilah, I don't remember most of the story, but it was about a rabbi who could call deer or something, and we were all listening so intently when all of a sudden, an actual deer came up into the chapel. That may or may not have helped convince me that there is some sort of power out there."

"And then you met Thor."

She nudged his shoulder, "You're catching on."

Services included a sermon from Rabbi Daniel about a king who desired a ring that would make him happy when he was feeling sad, but would give him a sense of humility when he was feeling arrogant, and of the jeweler who he hired to complete the deed.

The ring had been engraved with the words _'gam ze ya'avor'_ or 'this too shall pass'.

Bucky thought it was fitting.

It only took about an hour, but by then Bucky was getting hungry, and Mara and Marley were too, but were actually vocalizing their desires for food, "Just a few more prayers," Charlene said as they walked to the Chadar Ohel, which was clear on the other side of the camp. "You know Mara, this is just how camp is like when you're a camper too."

"But it's so _far_."

Apparently every major location was clear on the opposite side of camp from the other.

"It encourages the campers to burn off all the carbs they eat at meals," Darcy said, her hands tucked into her sleeves to ward off the cold that settled in the canyon once the sun had set. "_So_ many carbs. _All _the carbs. When I was a counselor in training, I'm pretty sure the only things we did all summer were eat, sleep, and cry."

"Cry?"

"Sixteen year olds are very emotional creatures."

The Chadar Ohel was a long room with tables that seated twelve stretched in two rows, and the Lewis' and Bucky ended up at a table by the door that led out to the front deck.

"Is that the deck you said they parked a car on?" Bucky asked as he looked at the small square space, the fencing around it bordered with the same wooden benches that were all around the camp. "I don't think the structure could handle that much weight."

"Oh probably not," Darcy agreed with a laugh as she grabbed the small book of matches from where they were propped up against a menorah with two candles waiting to be lit for the first night of Chanukah, along with the two free standing candles for Shabbat itself, while Annie moved the white linen cover off a bag of challah and took the bread out of the clear plastic. "We're lucky it didn't fall through to the storage room downstairs."

Bucky's eyes widened as he looked around, campers and former campers alike taking pictures and pouring water and punch into their glasses, "What even _is_ this place?"

Greg, who was sitting to Bucky's right at the head of their table, patted his shoulder, "Summer camp is a whole different world."

At the front of the room, Rabbi Daniel had a wireless microphone in one hand as he stood next to a small cart with two unlit candles, a silver Kiddush cup with grape juice, and his own covered loaf of challah, "I'm sure everyone is hungry," there were a few quiet grumbles of agreement. "If everyone could light their candles, we'll start with the first prayer. _Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu l'had'lik neir shel Shabbat_."

Rabbi Daniel then led everyone in the room in the same prayer again, but this time, instead of saying Shabbat, they said Chanukkah at the end, followed by two more prayers for the first night of the holiday, and Charlene helped Mara take the candle in the center of the menorah and used that one to light the candle at the far end before replacing it.

Next was a longer prayer, everyone holding their tiny plastic cups of grape juice in the palms of their hand, and Bucky looked around the room as mostly of the younger set, Darcy, Annie, and Marley included, held their cups high over their head, and as the chanting finished off, they lifted the cups high before knocking them back like a shot.

Darcy noticed Bucky looking at her in question, and she grinned, "I'll tell you later," she mouthed before one of the guitar-toting song leaders, who oddly enough looked like Jesus Christ—sounded like him too—led the room in a prayer over washing their hands with the packet of wet-wipes that was on the table.

They finally got to the prayer called the Ha-Motzi, which Darcy muttered was the, 'yay we can finally eat' prayer, and Annie picked up the challah while Daniel told everyone to make sure they were touching the challah or touching someone who was touching someone who was touching the challah.

Darcy held her hand out to him, the other stretched across the table and her fingers digging into the challah, and Bucky took it as the prayer started, watching as the campers sang through the prayer before each table ripped their challah to pieces and everyone fell into their chairs.

"Seriously, this challah's like crack," Darcy said as she dropped a massive piece on her plate, grabbing the butter before she sat down. "People try to bribe the kitchen staff to get more during the summers."

"Do they bake it here?"

Darcy shook her head, "They have a standing account at a tiny Jewish bakery down in Camarillo. They send one of the schleps out on a run for it on Friday mornings. Trust me, there have been days where I've been tempted to ask Tony to borrow the jet so I could come out here and get some."

"Like he _would_," Annie scoffed.

"Oh no," Bucky corrected. "He definitely would."

Not long after the meal started—Greg had gone up to the kitchen window at the front of the room and to get a platter with the dinner of chicken, latkes, broccoli, and rice pilaf—Dennis came around the table, looking around before his hand out to Darcy, "Matches, Kid."

"But _Dennis_," she whined, using the same inflection she used when they first got there.

"The last thing we need is for the dining hall to catch fire, _again_," he said pointedly, shaking his waiting hand. "You know the drill."

She giggled and plopped the matchbook in his hand, "Yeah, yeah. No fun allowed at camp."

"_Structured _fun," he corrected with a grin before moving on to the next table.

Bucky popped a piece of challah in his mouth, it really was as good as she said, and he wondered for a moment if _he_ could convince Tony to possibly go on a run to this bakery every once in a while, "_Please _tell me you didn't set the dining hall on fire."

The entire table got a laugh out of that, and Darcy shook her head, waving her hand until she got her giggles under control, "No, no," she took a deep breath and tired again. "No. It happened during the off-season. Someone was smoking behind the kitchens and some boxes caught fire and we lost like, half the building. For the summer after that we had to eat in this gross humid tent down on the lawn that made everything look green."

"But didn't you say once that they almost did it again during a skit?" Annie asked as she grabbed the applesauce and spooned some over her latkes.

Darcy nodded, and then swallowed a forkful of rice pilaf, "Yeah, it was during a birthday skit, I think, and the Birthday Bunny, which yes, is a guy who dresses up in a giant bunny suit, asked for some matches. Dennis shut that one down pretty quickly in the name of _way too soon_."

"A bunny suit?"

She shrugged, "It's tradition. One of Dad's friends started it back in the seventies."

They settled in to eat, and Darcy looked up when she felt a touch at her elbow, "What's up? I promise the food's edible. The head chef here is CIA. Culinary Institute of America, not you know, a spook. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if he could go toe-to-toe with Agent Neighbor."

Bucky chuckled as he switched his fork from one hand to the other and cut a latke in half, "I noticed at services, you didn't say a lot of the prayers, but the last one, the Kaddish?" She nodded. "You did?"

She nodded, then kept nodding, and took a sip of water, "I've known all these prayers backwards and forwards since I was eight, when I first started coming here. For years, I'd say them over and over, seven days a week, for every summer until I was sixteen."

"Then what?"

"And then I started reading the English translations, and I realized I didn't really agree with a lot of what the prayers are really saying," she shrugged. "Back then, I didn't really like placing so much blind faith and devotion to one all-powerful being, and now doubly so because of what I know about the world. But for me, the Kaddish is different, because it's a prayer to celebrate _life_. And there are a lot of people out there who have passed away who don't have families, loved ones, to say the Kaddish for them. So I say it for that. Sorry, I don't know how much sense that makes."

"I don't think it has to."

Darcy tilted her head and nodded slowly, "_Religion _doesn't really make a lot of sense to me."

"And then there's that."

After a quick dessert of apple turnovers and shiny golden Chanukah gelt, things got a little wild inside when cleanup started, and Darcy grabbed Bucky's hand—she could feel the servos clicking through faster and faster as his tension rose—tugging him through the door and out to the deck, the flooring creaking with each step they took.

There was a border of bright painted ceramic handprints bordering one of the long strips of wood in the fence around the deck, and Darcy walked over to a purple one in the corner, "This was the camp's Captaincy project for my year, along with the mosaic on the other side of the building," she ran her fingers over her name, which she carved into the palm. "Eighty-three of eighty-four handprints survived."

To the right of her handprint, there was a tracing of another handprint in the cement, "It was a tragic accident," she laughed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw a flash of movement, and he arched a brow when he saw a gaggle of girls, each holding their own drawstring bag, shoved their way into the bathroom, "What's that about?"

Darcy grinned, "You'll see," she nodded to the staircase across the street with her chin. "Come on. Let's go to the hall before everyone gets there so you can scout it. We're not going to miss much down here other than ten more minutes of praying."

"You sure do pray a lot out here."

"You have _no_ idea. Jews have prayers for just about _everything_."

He followed her up the stairs to a large building with a row of stained glass windows with wooden frames, and on one side of the white-painted outer wall, was a list of names, the camp's Legends, and Bucky scanned through them, "Your parents are both legends?"

"Dad was a camper as a kid and never really left, and Mom holds the record of longest-serving office manager at ten years. That's how they met," looking up, she pointed to another name up by the top. "My grandmother Dorothy Lewis is up there too. We've kind of been around this camp for a while."

She tilted her head toward the glass door that led inside, "Let me show you something."

Their shoes—well, Darcy's shoes anyway—squeaked on the linoleum floors as she led him to the back of the room where tiny squares of painted tile were neatly lined along the wall, "Every year, the team that wins Maccabiah gets their own tile, with all the camper's names on it. I was only ever on a winning team once in eight years."

She tapped a bright red one, her name nearly painted in the middle, "That year was movie genres. Horror, comedy, romance, and," she wrinkled her nose. "I can't for the life of me remember the last one. Go figure."

Moving to her right, she tapped one of the older tiles, "Back in the day they were called the Olympics, and the teams were different countries. This one's dad's, and up here," she lifted up onto her toes and tapped the second tile from the left. "Is Grandma Dorothy's. She was part of the second-ever summer all the way back in the fifties."

"And is that Marley over there?"

Darcy rolled her eyes and looked at the three tiles with her sister's name on it, "Three of four years here, three of four Maccabiah winning teams. I call shenanigans."

They were interrupted when the guitarist from dinner, plus two more, the three dressed in basketball jerseys and shorts and had garish sweatbands wrapped around their heads, came in and started setting up on stage.

Grinning, Darcy tugged on Bucky's hand and led him outside, "Come on," there was a staircase that wrapped up and round the building to the balcony the tiles were housed under. "Best place to watch what's going to happen next is from upstairs."

"You're not going to partake?"

"Oh no," she laughed. "I did my time when I was a camper and counselor. Spectating is more fun, and I'm not up for getting trampled tonight anyway."

The building, which probably had been built in Dorothy Lewis' time, creaked as they stepped out to the balcony, and already some the campers, dressed just like the song leaders, were gathering in the middle of the room.

Everyone started singing an easy repetition of _Shabbat Shalom_, and even Darcy was humming along, the tones low and calming, until all of a sudden, there were loud cheers from outside and a massive group, the rest of the current era of campers, rushed in, shouting along to the song.

And all of a sudden, the energy was high, like a rock concert.

Eyebrows up by his hairline, Bucky looked down at Darcy in askance, and she grinned wide as she made a sweeping gesture to the goings-on downstairs, "And this is how I spent eight Shabbats a year when I was a kid."

"With basketball jerseys, a teenager in a very small Tyrannosaurus Rex costume, and a mosh pit to Jewish folk music?"

She grinned and winked, "Just wait until the line dancing starts."

"I think I have to reevaluate everything I know about you."

"Only a couple things."

There were songs about Miriam and the Israelite women dancing after safely crossing the Red Sea, songs where the kids replaced Hebrew phrases with dirty sentences in English like 'I rock your mom' from 'Harachaman', songs about community, the whole world being a very narrow bridge, and the last song was apparently a song about a wedding, with the women gathering on one side of the room and facing off with the men that got so rowdy that the younger kids had to be shuffled to the back of the room.

The singing turned into circle dancing on the plaza outside, and Darcy was whisked away by a tall man with curly brown hair and wearing a blue Arizona basketball jersey to partake in a pairs dance that saw the women flying from one side of the doubled circle and back to the other before they changed partners.

Not one to dance in circles or lines—not anymore—Bucky stood against the wall under the names of Camp Shalom Alechem's legends, when a pair of young boys came up to him, and he arched a brow when they whispered back and forth at each other.

Finally, one boy looked up, "Are you really the Winter Soldier?"

He looked at them for a long minute, and then nodded, "Yes."

Just like they, they lit up, one gushing with, "Oh my god! Can we get your autograph?" while the other asked, "Can I get a picture with you? Please?"

Hazy memories of a similar uproar for Steve flashed to the forefront of his mind, and Bucky nodded slowly, "Sure."

It was only when the music turned to a line dance Darcy didn't know that she was able to sneak out of the middle of the mass of dancers, and she arched a brow when she found Bucky sitting in the middle of a small crowd, mostly boys, signing autographs and taking pictures.

She slipped her phone from her pocket and snapped a couple pictures, sending one to Steve with a note of, "All's quiet on the western front."

Someone sidled up next to her, and she saw Annie looking on, "He certainly is something."

"He's recovering from shit I can't even begin to explain, and I sure as hell wouldn't do it here," she said over the pounding bass of a rap song by an Israeli band. "This is _very _good for him."

Running a hand through her sweaty hair, Darcy walked over to the planter Bucky was perched on and stepped into the dirt, squatting behind him and pressing a hand to his shoulder, "How you doing?"

He scribbled his name on a piece of paper and handed it back to a little boy that couldn't be much older than Mara and looked up at her, shrugging the shoulder her hand rested on before reaching up and squeezing her fingers, "I'm okay."

"Good," she murmured. "That's good."

When Darcy pulled into the driveway two hours later, she put the car in park, rubbing her eyes as she looked in the rearview and saw Mara and Marley passed out in the backseat.

Sighing, she turned around to wake them up when Bucky put a hand on her wrist, "I can take Mara inside, if you want," he murmured, his thumb absently running back and forth against her skin.

"Thanks," she whispered as she cut off the engine.

Darcy nudged Marley back to enough consciousness that she could lead her inside, and did just that while Bucky took Mara upstairs, Annie following at his heels, murmuring her thanks.

Dropping her stuff off in her room and toeing off her boots, Darcy slipped back into the hall and made her way back downstairs to grab a bottle of water, and nodded at Bucky, who was sitting at the island with a drink of his own and some snacks he pilfered from her mom's pantry, which was big enough to feed a third-world country.

Twice.

When the refrigerator door closed, Charlene looked up from her phone, "Darcy!" Her voice was an excited whisper as her thumbs flew over her the keyboard. "Aunt Lily called while we were in the car!"

She arched a brow, "Isn't it a little early for her to dig herself out of the mountain from crossover season?" She looked at Bucky and answered the question she saw he was about to ask. "She's the Director of Sports Communications at some university up in the Bay Area. We only hear from her for like, five minutes over the holidays, and then in July, when she comes out of her sport coma to lead the Captaincy kids on their annual hike through one of the national parks behind the camp."

Charlene nodded with a wry grin, "Apparently football wrapped up a little early this year. She said she was able to rent out the house up in Blue Sky for the weekend. We're off to Big Bear in the morning!"

"Hate to burst your bubble," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the front of the house. "But the Tony-mobile isn't going to make it up the mountain, and the Charlene-mobile doesn't have enough seats. Volstagg might have been cool with riding on the roof of the Pinz, but I doubt Bucky's going to feel the same way."

Charlene waved a dismissive hand, "I already called Angie Dawson. We're going to borrow their Suburban."

"Well haven't you just thought of _everything_," she looked at Bucky, who seemed deep in thought as he snacked on a carrot. "So. Snow?"

He shrugged one shoulder, "Apparently."

Not convinced, she arched a brow, and he arched his right back, waiting until she caved and smirking when she did.

Throwing her hands up, she pivoted back and grinned at her mother, "Snow it is, I guess," she tilted her head. "So if Lily got the house, does that mean she invited just us?"

"Oh no, the whole family's coming this time. Isn't that exciting? It's been so long since you've seen everyone."

Darcy groaned, "Ugh, but even Auntie Con-Artist?"

"Darcy! Be nice!"

"What?" She looked back at Bucky. "She totally is. I didn't even need old-SHIELD to run background on her to know that."

Greg walked back downstairs, now wearing sweats and a bright red college hockey t-shirt from his alma mater, Boston University, "Yes, John, Valerie, and Troy are coming too. You have my permission to hide with Lily and pretend you're selectively hard of hearing."

She smacked a hand to her forehead before dropping down and resting against the cool granite countertop, "Shit, maybe we _should_ have been pretending we're dating all this time."

"Darcy?" Bucky coughed, and took a long drink of water.

"Ugh, never mind."

"Hey," Bucky murmured a little while later as Darcy made her way into her bathroom. "Thanks for showing me that tonight."

She shrugged a shoulder and leaned against the doorframe, "It's nothing."

"It's part of who you are," he shook his head as he took a step forward, then hesitated in the middle of her room before turning back to the corner where he stashed his bag. "That's not nothing."

Smiling, she nodded slowly, "Maybe when we get back home you can take me on a tour of olden day Brooklyn?"

Half bent over his suitcase, Bucky straightened and turned to face her fully, his head tilted, "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

After packing—see _repacking_, with the addition of some winter-weather gear she didn't know she had until Dad dragged a giant bag from the garage—Darcy sat in her pajamas on her bed, the blankets draped over her lap and her phone in her hands, absentmindedly flipping it over her fingers.

"Thinking pretty hard over there," Bucky's murmur dragged her out of her musings.

But for the life of her, she couldn't remember _what_ she was thinking about.

She blinked, and then looked at him where he sat, slumped in the wingback, a tattered paperback with a Russian title propped open in one hand and his tablet balanced on the armrest while he propped his chin on one hand and looked at her.

Right.

_That's_ what she was thinking about.

"I'm not going to spontaneously combust either," he chuckled.

Blinking again, she shook her head, tapping the side of her phone against her lips, "I'm having a lot of thoughts right now," she murmured. "Usually I would process through them in a certain way, but I can not."

"You can't?" He arched a brow, tilting his head when he noticed the flush that crawled up her neck. "Is it because I'm here?"

The flush crept up her cheeks, but she smirked anyway, "What do you think?" She grinned before flopping back on her pillows and dropping her phone on the mattress next to her. "I'll just have to make do."

"You could talk to me about it?"

Lifting her head, she arched a brow and snorted, "Yeah, no," she reached over to her nightstand and turned off the light. "Good night Bucky."

He was chuckling low in his chest as the room went dark, and Darcy was glad that the lack of light his just how badly she was blushing—not that he didn't already know—and she grabbed her phone, tapping off a quick text to Jane, who would see it when she woke up in London the next day.

"_Remember when you were twelve and you wondered if that cute boy in your class had a crush on you too? Ugh!_"

In the morning, Darcy saw a notification waiting for her that said, "_Oh my god, did Bucky make a move? Finally!_"

Well shit.

She tossed her phone on the nightstand and looked at Bucky, who was engrossed—as engrossed as an assassin could possibly be, anyway—in something on his tablet, "Morning," he murmured. "Sleep well?"

With a groan, she flopped back down and covered her face with her hands.

"Can I take that as a yes?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5 (In which Bucky meets the REST of the Lewis Family)**

**Five Months Ago, The Jane's Corner of Tony's Lab**

Darcy was about one hundred and five percent sure that if she had to hold her flashlight at the angle she had it so Jane could see under the console she was working on any longer, her arm was definitely going to fall off.

"Left! Left! You're drifting again," Jane muttered through the wrench clenched between her teeth. "I'm almost done."

She adjusted, shifting one leg forward so she could rest her elbow on her knee to take some of the pressure off, "Yeah, you said that twenty minutes ago," she muttered.

"Oh you're fine."

Wrinkling her nose, Darcy started counting ceiling tiles out of boredom, but thankfully Jane _did _finish ten minutes later, and they were unfolding and getting off the unforgiving metal floor when the doors to the lab swished open.

"Hi Bucky," Jane chirped as she dropped back onto her desk chair and rolled it back over to the table piled with pieces of equipment and a few science journals and reference books. "What brings you down here?"

Darcy looked over her shoulder, stumbling a little and catching herself against the filing cabinet as blood rushed back into her legs, "Oh ow," she muttered as she shook one foot out. "Bucky. Hi. What's up?"

He stood in the doorway looking a little uneasy as he gripped a large thermos in one hand, "You've been down here a while, figured I'd bring you some coffee," he muttered, holding it out to her.

Resisting the urge to arch a brow, she walked—okay limped, because her left hip was _not_ okay—over to him and accepted it, "Thanks."

Apparently today was one of those days where he wasn't up for actually walking into the lab.

It still happened from time to time, and while sometimes Tony bitched about having to do his maintenance on Bucky's arm in the kitchen, he was still happy enough to do it.

With a nod, Bucky pivoted and made a bee-line right back to the elevators, and Darcy watched until the doors slid shut, sipping her coffee as she turned around and saw Jane was giving her a look, "What?"

Jane was still smirking, "He came by with coffee because he knew you've been so busy. That's really cute."

"Friends do that for each other," she muttered as she looked steadfastly down at the thermos' shiny lid. "I do it for you all the time, even outside of my duties as your assistant."

"Yes, but you don't want to sleep with me."

Darcy arched a brow, "You sure about that Janey?"

With a roll of her eyes, she nudged Darcy's shoulder with the hand not clutching her own coffee cup of water, "Oh don't start."

"I could stand to hear a little more," Tony piped up from the other side of the room, while Bruce covered his face with his hands.

**The Second Night Of Chanukah**

Like Charlene had said, they were on the road right after a very early breakfast, Darcy squashed in the middle seat of the center row of the bright red Suburban they were borrowing from the neighbors down the street, between Annie and Bucky while Marley and Mara sat in the slightly smaller back row.

An hour in, Greg was navigating through the traffic on the 126 when Darcy's phone started buzzing violently.

"Problem?" Bucky arched a brow as she unlocked it and started tapping away.

She snorted as she hit send on a reply, "You wish. Apparently Jane ran into Richard, that guy she was sort of almost dating back when Thor was stuck on Asgard, and she's trying to figure out the nicest way to say 'sorry I stood you up for lunch all those years ago, but the tabloid rumors are true, and I am very happily boinking the literal God of Thunder."

"Well I hope you didn't tell her to say _that_."

She wrinkled her nose at him, "It can't be anything worse than any excuses Steve would try to make."

"When _Steve_ can't talk his way out of something, he fights."

"I don't think telling Jane to punch Richard and run away is any better than anything I could come up with," she looked up and saw Charlene was looking over her shoulder and gaping. "Yes Mom, the rumors are true: America's greatest piece of wartime propaganda is not actually perfect."

"_Darcy!_"

She smirked, "He leaves the toilet seat up in the parlor on the common level and enjoys walking around in the patriotic novelty boxers that Natasha replaces his tighty-whities with when she things he's getting too uptight."

Charlene continued gaping while Greg chuckled quietly, and then she shook her head and laughed, "Oh Darcy, you're such a kidder," she said as she went back to the puzzle game she was playing on her iPad.

Rolling her eyes, she smirked up at Bucky, "As you can see, my inability to infer when people are serious is genetic."

Four hours, five bathroom breaks, one slightly pricey trip through a McDonalds drive through, a quick stop to put chains on the Suburban's tires later, and they _finally_ turned into the driveway of a large, three-story house at the top of a snowy hill.

Darcy almost fell out of the car because her legs were numb from being stuck in the middle, but Bucky caught her around the waist and tugged her up against him before she could face plant, "Thanks," she muttered, clutching his arm as she got her footing, bracing against him as she rolled her right angle before setting it down on the patch of snow-free asphalt.

"Mara, don't slip on the stairs!" Charlene called as the girl made her way over to the hill that led up to the house, thick pieces of wood terraced into the dirt to lead in a shaky path to the tiny front patio.

Shaking her head, Darcy tugged Bucky along with her, "We used to come up here once a year when Marley was little. For a while this place was off the rental circuit, but then it popped back up a few years ago. Not exactly the most convenient location, but it's totally my dream house. You know, if I had eight million dollars and didn't live in New York."

Mara was already tapping on the front door by the time they got to the top, and seconds later it was flung open, revealing a petite woman with dyed red hair who looked like she walked straight out of Lululemon's winter catalog, "Hey there squirt!" She scooped Mara in her arms before looking at the pair. "Doth mine eyes deceive me? You're Darcy, right?"

"These days, I tend to go by, 'that mystery woman who hangs out with the Avengers', but yeah, Darcy for short," she smirked as she scuttled into the warmth of the cozy wooden foyer.

With a laugh, Lily slung her free arm around Darcy's shoulders, "It's been too long, 'Friend of the Avengers'," she looked at Bucky, her brown eyes narrow. "And speaking of, you're Captain America's friend."

He nodded, and she dropped Mara, the girl running off into the house, and held her hand out, "I'm Lily Lewis, Greg's oft-absent but totally awesome sister."

"Bucky Barnes."

She grinned, "Nice to see that cheesy World War Two cartoons that aired in the early nineties was _totally_ wrong about you. I'm sure people have enough conniptions with the hair."

Wincing a little, Darcy waved a hand at Bucky's questioning look, "Tony's waiting until everyone's sure you're not crazy anymore before he opens the vault of back-in-the-day Howling Commando media."

"So I should plan a fake breakdown with Natasha after we get back?"

"Maybe give it a couple weeks, unless you want to see the interesting shades of red Steve's bound to turn into when he sees how _he_ was portrayed in all these shows. There _may_ be one short movie where he goes toe to toe with Count Dracula, who wants to make him one of his brides."

Eyebrows flying to his hairline, Bucky coughed, "I'll keep that in mind."

Lily's grinned widened as she looked between them, "Oh, this is going to be one _hell_ of a weekend."

"Does that mean the terrible trio isn't here yet?" Darcy looked around, but didn't see signs of anyone else in the house.

Letting out a dramatic sigh and pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, Lily nodded, "John, his _darling _Valerie, and prodigy baby Troy hit traffic on the 10 getting out of Los Angeles. They'll be here in a couple more hours."

"Or maybe the bad traffic will convince them to turn back around and forget about coming at all?" Darcy hoped.

She really, really hoped.

Lily winked, "We'll certainly see, but I brought provisions in case they do make it up here."

At Bucky's arched brow, she smirked as she reached up and tucked a stray strand of bright hair back under her black headband, "I may or may not have taken some bribes in the form of some really nice wines over the last couple months at work. Nothing that will trigger an NCAA inquiry, but yeah. Wine."

"I think I see the resemblance now," he said to Darcy. "And I think I'm a little scared."

Darcy's smirk was identical to Lily's, "You should be."

Bucky left Darcy to catch up with her aunt, the pair drifting off into the main living room, and he made his way back outside to help Greg finish unloading the suitcases and crates of Chanukah gifts from the trunk of the Suburban.

"Thanks," Greg said as he pulled the trunk hatch shut, then nodded back up to the house. "What do you think so far?"

Shrugging a shoulder, Bucky grabbed two boxes of brightly-wrapped gifts under one arm and grabbed a handle of one of the larger suitcases, "It's a nice place, I can see why Darcy likes it," he said, then glanced back up at the house. "She and Lily seem close."

"My sister lived with us for a couple years while she was working a communications internship at UC Santa Barbara so she could save some money. Annie was off at Yale, and Marley was a bit of a handful for Charlene and me when she was a baby, so they ended up spending a lot of time together when Lily was home."

"It explains a lot," he smirked.

Greg laughed as they headed up the stairs, "You seem to know Darcy pretty well."

He shrugged again, "She's been around ever since I moved into the Tower."

"I always thought it was a little strange, Tony Stark just offering housing to my daughter and Jane. Charlene wasn't thrilled, asked me to offer to fly her home from London."

Bucky remembered reading newspapers and tabloid articles about the strange mish-mash of men and women that Stark brought to New York after SHIELD fell, "Stark doesn't care to think about what other people may think of what he does. Pepper's the one who really runs the household."

"Can't say that's at all surprising," he faced Bucky. "But Darcy's doing all right up there? We've been a little concerned since she decided not to finish up at Culver."

He swallowed, looking up to the snowy trees that bordered the road as he gathered his thoughts, "It's hard to go back to living a normal life after what we've all seen and done. But if Darcy wanted to do something, have an actual job, the offers are out there. Stark Industries technically has her on payroll as part of the lab staff, and I think she mentioned once that Thor asked her to advise him when he goes to Washington to negotiate on behalf of Asgard."

"So what you're telling me is that I don't need to worry."

"You're her dad, I don't think you're ever going to stop worrying about her."

"Probably true," Greg nodded as they made their way to the stairs. "Thanks Bucky."

"You're welcome, sir."

In the foyer, Bucky looked up from kicking snow off his boots to see Greg holding a hand out, "Call me Greg."

Bucky shook his hand, "Okay."

Even at just a handful of years younger than Greg—not that she'd ever admit to being even a day over twenty-nine—Lily Lewis had that carefree air that Darcy continued to cling to, even as the world opened up to her and she saw everything, including and especially the ugly, bloody parts.

Marley didn't seem to be as impressed with the confirmed bachelorette—not that much impressed the twelve-year-old, Bucky had quickly learned—but Mara stared in awe at Lily, who was helping Charlene unbox the Chanukah decorations onto a table in the large living room they were lounging in as they waited for the rest of the Lewis clan to arrive.

As she unwrapped the menorahs that previous sat on the island in Charlene's kitchen, Lily told them stories of her work-related travels that fall, including weekend jaunts to Hawaii and Oregon in August, to Kentucky, Colorado, and Utah in one very busy September, and even a last-minute trip to the Bahamas for a week over Thanksgiving.

From what Bucky remembered of her dossier—which he only gave a cursory once-over because he didn't expect to actually meet the woman—the position of Director of Sports Communications barely encompassed half of what she did.

"One minute I'm in my office updating volleyball records, and then next I'm walking through the Atlantis resort and emailing my assistant director asking her to check in on my cat while I'm away," she shrugged a shoulder before balling up a piece of newspaper that was used to pad one of the glass menorahs and tossed it over her shoulder into the trashcan a few feet away. "Story of my life."

Bucky arched a brow at the no-look shot, "Your aim's not bad."

"We play a lot of mini basketball in our office," she shrugged and arched another ball of newspaper across the room, and it bounced on the rim before dropping down to join the other. "One of my students once took an hour trying to hook a shot off the top of his foot with one of those mushy souvenir balls the women's basketball players throw out when they're being introduced. He actually managed it too."

On the other side of the room, Darcy looked up from her phone and watched Bucky watch Lily for a second, "Hey Bucky," she waited for him to look over. "What's with the look?"

Blinking, he looked over to her, "Her aim is _very_ good. Barton-level good."

She wrinkled her nose and pointed a finger like she was admonishing a disobedient puppy, "No_._"

"But-"

"_No._ Non. Nein. Nyet."

Lily looked between them and laughed, "Do I want to know?"

Putting her phone down slowly, she looked away from Bucky's smirking face, "No."

"Hmm," she tapped her lips. "Guess the answer is _no_, then. Weirdo."

With a snort, Bucky rolled his eyes and pushed off the couch, walking over to Darcy before he nodded toward the formal living room on the other end of the hall, "Think the piano's tuned?"

"Maybe? I don't think anyone touched the thing in a while, but have at it."

Patting her shoulder, Bucky walked off, and Darcy angled her head back and shifted in the armchair she was sprawled sideways across, watching as he sat down on the padded bench in front of the Baby Grand, lifted the cover off the keys, and after tapping through a couple scales, he started playing.

Darcy sighed as she shifted, turning in the chair to rest her neck on the armrest, watching Bucky upside-down as he lost himself in the music he played from memory.

"Darcy?"

Flinching, she heaved her head up, eyes crossing a little before focusing on Annie, "Huh?"

"What's he playing?"

"Couldn't tell you," she dropped her head back, mostly because it hurt to keep lifting it. "Something by Rimsky-Korsakov probably. Everyone's least favorite Nazi organization taught him since it's a good way to keep his arm calibrated when he's not in combat. He's also not terrible with anything by Rachmaninoff."

Annie was quiet, and Darcy groaned as she leaned forward, heaving back up straight, "He's really good, isn't he?"

"And _Hydra_ taught him that?"

"Sort of," she looked down at her fingers as she tried to gather what to tell Annie without saying too much. "He already knew how to play, learned when he was a kid, but he only pulls out the fun dance hall stuff from his days in Brooklyn when Steve is around to needle him. The Russian stuff is because he needs to do it."

Annie rolled her eyes, "_How_ is this your life?"

"I accidentally moved to New Mexico for an internship."

Eventually Darcy padded into the living room, and Bucky barely looked up as he kept playing, while she curled up on a low chair behind him and to the left, propping her chin on her arm as she watched him.

The tension in his shoulders eased away as the song went on, which helped lessen the tension in hers, because she knew that this couldn't be easy for him, no matter what Steve thought of his progress the last few months.

Guilt bubbled in her chest, because part of the tension was definitely her fault, dragging him to camp like that.

She focused on her own breathing as she watched his hands move across the keys, and eventually the music shifted from the familiar Russian music to the spring movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and she smiled a little, "Will wonders never cease?" She murmured, and his shoulders shifted a little to let her know that he heard her.

When the song ended, he stretched his arms up over his head, and the small strip of skin exposed at the small of his back between his t-shirt and the top of his jeans distracted Darcy until he turned, straddling the bench so he could face her.

"Hey," he murmured as he tugged his sweater up over his head and shifted the sleeve of his white undershirt back so he could inspect the arm.

"Everything working all right Tin Man?"

He smirked, "Thumb was sticking a little during the drive," he glanced over his shoulder and frowned at something on his back. "Can you help me a second? Something isn't sitting right."

With a nod, Darcy rolled out of her perch and settled on the bench behind him, drawing his shirt up his back to reveal pale, scar-dusted skin, "Is something shorting out?"

Reaching back with his right hand, he tugged his shirt over his head and dropped it on his lap. "Don't think so," he muttered as he rotated his shoulder. "Feels like something's caught between the plating."

Darcy made a face, her fingers hovering over the line on his back where his metal shoulder was fused to his skin, "Where's it feeling weird?"

"Shoulder blade," he muttered, shifting again as he tried to reach back with his right hand, but Darcy gently brushed it away.

She pressed her palm to his left shoulder, urging him to lift his arm and hold it across his chest, "Everything looks like its all right," she smoothed her fingers over the plating, looking for any bumps, but tried to avoid touching the vivid layer of scaring. "I'm not seeing anything."

"It's under the plating," he shifted again. "Can you dig it out?"

Wrinkling her nose, she looked around, "I don't have anything," she looked down and saw the knife at his back. "Can I borrow your knife?"

His shoulders tensed a little before he nodded, and Darcy slipped the knife from the holster before she pressed her forehead to his back, "I think I see something. Unless there are supposed to be wires?"

"No," he shook his head, the long strands of his hair brushing against Darcy's forehead. "The arm wasn't designed with exposed wiring. Stark made sure it was running right last week."

"Well you never know what you end up with after any time spent at camp," she muttered, pushing his shoulder forward, which made the gap between the plating a little bigger. "After one summer I went back to school and found sand in my clothes for like, six months, but I only worked beach day like, twice. It gets everywhere."

Bucky pulled his arm tighter across his chest as Darcy slipped the edge of the knife between the plating, "Don't move," she muttered when she felt the knife press against something that would have been soft tissue in a normal arm. "No offense, but this is kinda gross."

"Sorry," he muttered, and she felt him curling tighter around himself with the hand she pressed to the center of his back.

She tapped her fingers against him, "Dude, nothing can be worse than that time Pepper had to shove her hand into Tony's arc reactor after he got back from Afghanistan. I have seen the video and it is gross."

When she pulled the knife back out, the tip was covered in something dark and gel-like, and Darcy wrinkled her nose at it before looking around to find something to wipe it off on, "How's it feel now?" She asked, reaching forward to drag one side of the knife over his leg, and then the other.

"Hey! I just washed those."

Snorting, she looked down at her black, gray, and pink flower-print leggings, "And my pants are new," she smirked, curving the knife back against her palm and holding the hilt out to him.

Bucky took it, his fingers brushing against hers, "Thanks," he muttered. "And sorry."

She shifted forward, "You _don't _have to apologize," she muttered, her thighs bracketing his as she dropped her head back against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his middle.

With a sigh, he curled his hands around her wrists, trying to urge her away from him, but she shook her head against his skin and held tighter, "This is a part of you, Bucky. There's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"That's not it."

Darcy squeezed his side, "Yes it is. What did I tell you about Rule Two?"

He sighed again, his head falling forward, "Not to worry," he recited. "What's Rule One?"

Laughing against his back, she shook her head, "It's not important. But you know what it should be?" She felt his shrug more than she saw it. "It should be, '_Darcy Lewis is always right_'."

"Darcy Lewis is a _menace_," he laughed as she curled tighter around him.

They sat together as his chuckles died off, Darcy letting her thoughts drift as the minutes ticked down until the less tasteful half of the Lewis family made their way up the mountain.

A click of a camera shutter snapped through the room, and Darcy looked across the room to see Lily holding her phone up in front of her from her spot in the doorway, "You are both obscenely adorable."

"Anyone tell you you're supposed to respect your elders?" Bucky snorted, but didn't move when Darcy didn't.

Lily snapped a couple more pictures before she shoved her phone back in her pocket, "You've got a sassy one here Darce, I approve," she leaned back and looked into the hallway. "Hey Greg, why don't you conveniently turn back and walked into the kitchen?"

His reply was muffled, and Darcy mouthed her thanks as her dad's footsteps disappeared toward the far side of the house, "So what's up?"

"John called, and those other people we happen to be related to will be here in about a half hour," she wrinkled her nose. "We'll figure out rooms and then maybe dinner then."

Darcy nodded as Lily turned back into the hallway, but leaned back before she was out of view, "And by the way, you might want to put your shirt back on before Charlene shits a brick. Or starts making crass comments about your workout routines."

Making an _ew_ face, Darcy dropped her arms and inched back, Bucky putting his shirt and sweater back on as Lily flounced through the hall calling for her brother, "Ugh, I am _so_ not ready for this."

"At least you're doing all right with your mother?"

He turned toward her, and Darcy groaned as she leaned forward and rested her forehead against his shoulder, "Auntie Val is even more of a ridiculous bitchy creature than the Generalissima is."

"Always an adventure," he ran his hand up her back and squeezed her neck. "It's going to be fine."

"Ugh."

Whatever Bucky expected out of the arrival of the other half of the Lewis family, it was not remotely like what actually happened not long after he and Darcy emerged from the formal living room.

Valerie Dorner-Lewis, a petite woman who wore her curves the same way she wore her bleach-blonde perm, breezed into the house with a cheery hello, Lily following with a barely-masked scowl on her face while John and Troy Lewis followed, both laden with a set of heavy matching suitcases that didn't look too different from the set Tony gifted to Pepper for her birthday in September.

"Darcy darling," she leaned in, cupping her cheeks with her manicured, yet sandpapery hands. "You've finally come home from gallivanting around the world! It's wonderful. You're certainly looking well."

"Hi Val," she muttered through clenched teeth as she resisted the urge to swipe the woman's hands from her face.

"And you must be the _boyfriend_," she practically sneered as she spared half a second to glance at Bucky. "Pleasure."

Before either Darcy or Bucky could correct her, she'd already moved on to greet Greg and Marley, who looked equally thrilled, and Lily dropped on the couch to Darcy's left with a quiet grunt, "Why did I have to be a good sister and invite the entire family?"

"Beats the shit out of me," Darcy muttered back, nudging her in the side with the point of her elbow.

"This place is so quaint, now isn't it?" Valerie said out of the side of her mouth as she looked around the expansive living room. "So lovely of you to secure it for us Lily. We do appreciate it."

Lily blinked as she crossed one leg over the other, "Thanks _sis_."

Greg clapped his hands together to dispel the tension that settled over the room, John and Troy standing silently with the piles of luggage, "Why don't figure out sleeping arrangements and everyone can get settled in before we start thinking about dinner?" He looked at Lily. "Where did you leave your things?"

"I'm in one of the rooms on the second floor, and maybe you, Charlene, and Marley can bunk in the main suite on the third floor?" She shrugged. "That one has the pullout couch."

Marley sighed, "Because there's nothing better than being stuck in a tiny room with my parents. _Thanks_ Lily."

"You're very welcome," she said blithely as she looked at John, who was younger than her but already graying at the temples like Greg. "I left the larger bedroom for you and Valerie, and there's a room with two beds for Annie and Mara."

Sharing a look with his wife, Greg nodded, "And if Troy's all right, he can stay in here on the air mattress while Darcy and Bucky take the two beds in the basement."

Valerie wrinkled her nose, "Greg are you sure that's," she pursed her lips like she just sucked on a lemon. "_Appropriate?_"

Under her breath, Lily let out a derisive snort, "You're one to talk Ms. Airline Gate Agents Have To Have Mandatory Flight Attendant Training."

Darcy's eyes lit up and she shared a fist-bump with her aunt that was masked by her bent knee, "Welp," she clapped her hands and hopped off the couch. "Come on Buck, time for the grand-ish tour."

By very vocal request from Darcy, Marley, and Mara, Charlene offered to make brisket and latkes for dinner, and after a quick run to a family-owned grocery store not far from the rental, she was standing in the middle of the kitchen in front of the food processor, using one of the attachments to shred the potatoes they bought to bits.

While Annie and Marley peeled potatoes at the sink, Darcy sat at the dining table with her laptop in front of her, trawling through Facebook with a very large glass of wine at her elbow.

She wrinkled her nose as yet another acquaintance from high school posted another picture of a sonogram, "Yuck," she muttered, scrolling down the page, but a few posts later she found a few hilarious selfies of Clint and Thor from their tour of the Great Wall.

Which _definitely_ meant that they were tying to take some attention away from the mounting tensions in whatever negotiations they were still trying to work through with the Chinese government.

She dashed off a quick text to Clint reminding him that it would definitely make his life more awesome if he got her a gift from the old Silk Market.

A few scrolls later and her brows flew to her hairline when she saw the pictures posted on Charlene's account. "Oh seriously, Mom?"

Sitting to her left, Bucky arched a brow at her quiet outburst, but stalled when Lily grabbed Darcy's computer and turned it toward her, "Oh these pictures are cute though!"

"Might have been easier to put up a status saying '_It's a miracle, my baby's not gay anymore!_'." She muttered, slouching in her chair and taking a long sip of the red wine, flinching a little when it burned down her throat. "Story of my damn life."

"No seriously, these are great pictures," Lily ignored her as she tapped on the trackpad, bringing up a candid of Darcy and Bucky walking hand-in-hand into the chapel before services the night before. "You should frame the one of you guys on the planter with all those kids. You know, if I didn't know better-"

"You can stop now Lily," Darcy cut her off, her cheeks bright pink as she steadfastly looked away from Bucky, but after she felt him nudge her with the point of his boot she finally grinned.

Whatever Lily was going to say next was cut off when there was a grinding whir that echoed from the kitchen, followed by a belch of smoke and a loud screech, which was then followed by a screech of her own from Charlene, "Greg! Didn't I ask you to make sure the food processor got fixed?"

"Maybe?" He called from the living room where he was flipping channels before settling on a college basketball game, and Lily let out a pleased grunt because of one of the teams before she swiped her glass off the table and joined him and John on the couch.

Darcy giggled as Charlene glared lightly as she gestured to the mess in front of her, "And just how do you think we're going to get these latkes made without a food professor, missy?"

"There's always the human touch."

"For _twenty pounds _of potatoes? Do you have any idea how long that will take?"

Memories of days spent baking with Clint, who couldn't cook unless he was prepping for an entire circus troupe, flashed through her mind, and she grinned and looked at Bucky, "I _do_ know someone who's really great with knives."

Putting down his tablet, Bucky waved his left hand.

"Would you mind?" Charlene asked, her hands covered in shredded potato as she maneuvered the already prepped potatoes into a large metal mixing bowl.

With a nod, Bucky headed into the kitchen and grabbed a knife out of the block and started chopping, while Valerie moved out of the way, "So Darcy," she said as she took his open seat at the table. "I heard you decided not to finish school. That's so unfortunate. I've been telling Troy that the most important thing a young adult can have is a degree from a top-tier university. Culver is certainly not in the cards for him, but there are plenty of appropriate schools in southern California for him to attend."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, "I think I'm set up pretty well for a pesky millennial," she glanced over her shoulder at her cousin. "But I'm glad Troy's apparently so concerned for my well-being. Thanks buddy."

Engrossed with the book in his hand, he waved a hand before turning to the next page, and Valerie simpered, "Tony Stark isn't going to pay your bills forever, sweetheart, and then where will you be? I'm right Charlene, aren't I?"

The woman in question waved a potato-y hand that could have been in dismissal or agreement—or both—and went back to the stove where large skillets were already bubbling with oil to try the latkes.

Darcy rolled her eyes and took a long sip from her own glass, then muttered, "You mean what John does for you?"

The grinding whir from Bucky's arm as he chopped potato after potato died down a little, and Darcy met his gaze and shook her head, her fingers busy toying with the stem of her wine glass before she took another long drink, draining it.

Valerie pursed her lips again, "Be that as it may, you're just setting yourself up to fail, throwing yourself into that crazy world of Stark's."

"Oh enough," she muttered. "I'm _fine_. Worry about your own life Auntie Val."

"At the very least, you've decided to be straight, and _that_ will only help you."

Seeing red, she pinched the bridge of her nose as she tamped down on the urge to tell her where to shove a chain saw, and through the buzzing in her ears she missed her dad turn the TV off, crossing the room to put a hand on her shoulder.

"And on that note," she jumped when Greg started talking. "Why don't we open a Chanukah gift before we do candles? I don't know about Troy, but we didn't open presents last night since we were at camp."

Darcy threw her hands in the air—just barely stopped herself from praising Odin—and practically bounded across the room toward the massive pile of presents clustered in front of the fireplace, "Is it just me or did these things multiply?" She muttered as she searched through the wrapped pile for the ones with her name.

"A whole load of presents came for you and Bucky the other day," Charlene said. "Did I not mention it? They came from New York."

Laughter bubbled in her chest, "No, you didn't," she grabbed a square box hastily wrapped in purple paper and shook it. "That's nice of them, those _crazy, irresponsible_ people we live with."

At the top of the pile were a pair of professionally wrapped gifts—and the tag was penned in Pepper's neat handwriting, not that she had to guess—one marked for her and the other for Bucky.

She shook both of them, but nothing seemed to rattle like the one from Clint did, and Darcy brought them over to the table, "Take a break Sergeant Potato," she chirped, Annie pulling out presents for Marley and Mara. "Figure we're safe starting off with Pepper's."

Washing his hands off, he walked back into the dining area, Mara already squealing as she clutched a giant Elsa doll, while Marley was more sedately tearing open a smaller box with a couple DVDs inside from her favorite TV show.

He arched a brow as he took his box, wrapped with heavy blue and white paper, while Darcy's was shiny silver and covered with tiny blue dreidels, "They sent us presents?"

"Apparently, though I'm really not sure how they got them sent over so fast," Darcy muttered, ripping the wrapping paper down the middle to reveal a white cardboard garment box.

"You know how Stark is. Remember when he installed a new shooting range for Barton in eighteen hours?"

"Do I ever."

Her eyes were wide as she freed the box from the rest of the wrapping, freeing the shiny bow from the torn corner of the paper and pressing it to the side of her head before she pulled the lid off the box, her eyes flaring wide.

"_Oh my god!_" She squealed as she unfolded an oversized knit sweater with rows of blue dreidels surrounding a giant menorah. "Dude look at this!"

Bucky arched a brow as he looked skeptically down at his box, "Uh."

Darcy flapped her hands at him before tugging her sweater over her head and shoving her arms through, and then she replaced the bow as it fell off her hair, "You open that box right now Bucky Barnes!"

He arched a brow, and she wrinkled her nose as she stared defiantly back until _he_ caved this time.

"Who am I to defy an order like that?" He smirked as he opened his box, brows flying to his hairline at the gray and white striped sweater with a massive menorah surrounded by six-pointed stars in the center. "Well this is, nice, I guess."

"Oh my god, I love it," Darcy squealed. "Put it on! Put it on!"

With a roll of his eyes, he tugged it over his head, "Happy now?"

Her eyes were bright as she looked at him, her fingers twitching as she reached for her phone, "Oh my god, Pepper is _so _my hero."

Bucky snorted, "I used to be an assassin," he muttered. "And now I'm wearing a giant ugly sweater."

"You are a giant ray of sunshine and I love it," she grinned, snapped a photo of him scowling down at his sweater and sending it off to Tony with a row of winky faces. "Come on," she held her free hand out. "We have to say thank you to Pepper. It's only good manners."

"I hate you," he muttered as he sidled up next to her and slung an arm over her shoulders.

She put her phone up, the camera facing them, "I bet you say that to all the pretty gals."

Later, while dinner was sizzling away on the stove and Valerie was busy chatting a distracted Charlene's ear off, Darcy texted her selfie with Bucky to Pepper, and then tweeted, "Winner of the day is 1000000000000000% CEO_VPP."

Then, she changed her Facebook profile pic to a shot of Bucky scowling at the camera while she grinned at him.

It had a hundred likes before they were done eating.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6 (In Which Family Is Complicated)**

**Four Months Ago (Stark Tower Gym)**

For the fifth time that morning, Natasha swept Darcy's legs out from under her and she fell on the gym's padded floor with a hard, echoing _thwack_, "Ugh," her groan echoed through the room. "My _spine_."

"Again."

She rolled onto her stomach and propped up on her arms before she sat up on her knees, "Oh can we _please _not?"

Without a hair out of place and like she stepped out of an old SHIELD recruitment magazine—because come on, they totally had to have something like that—Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, "Again Darcy. This is important."

"Meh," she growled as she shifted up and accepted the hand the redhead offered, rocking at the force Natasha used to pull her to her feet before she regained her balance. "_Fine_."

Lowering her center of balance as she fell into the stance that the redhead was pushing her to memorize, Darcy took a deep breath as Natasha struck out again, but it was only seconds later that she lost her footing _again_ and hit the mat with a loud _smack_.

With another heavy groan, she flopped on her back and leveled a pair of pleading eyes at Natasha, "If I promise not to get taken hostage again, can we _please_ call it a day?"

Pursing her lips, Natasha stepped up, her bare feet level with Darcy's toes, "You know how we felt when you got grabbed Darcy," her voice was hard. "Your taser helped you give us time, but you _have_ to know how to protect yourself unarmed. We will all sleep better knowing you can do that."

Darcy rubbed a hand over her face and sighed, tears stinging her eyes again, "I know, I know," she muttered, memories of last week's ordeal with the stray AIM cell that grabbed her off the street flashing through her mind. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just try again," she held her hand out, and Darcy took it. "Come on. We're almost done."

Fifteen minutes later, and Darcy was finally free to go pass out for the next week, hobbling into the gym's expansive locker room while Natasha finished stretching out on the mats.

Rubbing a towel through her wet hair, Darcy padded back out of the locker room in shorts and a loose t-shirt, brows arching when she heard voices from the far side of the gym.

"_How'd she do_?"

Pressing against the wall and peering around the corner, Darcy arched a brow when she saw Bucky standing over Natasha, who was doing the splits, leaning forward and gently wrapping her hands around her left foot.

Natasha turned her head, looking up at him, "You need to _talk_ to her yourself."

"_Natalia_."

She snapped something in Russian before he could go on, and Darcy watched as he crossed his arms over his chest and muttered something in reply in the same language.

And Darcy _really_ needed to learn more than how to ask where the bathroom was, plus a few stray insults that Clint taught her one boring night at the lone decent bar in Puente Antiguo.

"Hey JARVIS," she murmured as she watched the pair. "Can you translate for me?"

"Perhaps you should ask Sergeant Barnes yourself," he replied like he wasn't constantly monitoring everyone in the building. "He was quite concerned about your well-being when you were taken. We _all _were."

Sighing, she rubbed her fingers over her forehead, and then took a breath before stepping back into the gym, but when she looked back at Natasha, she was sitting alone.

"I know you don't want to put too much on him," Natasha said quietly as she rolled up to her feet, her hands clasped behind her back. "But he was _very_ concerned for you, and he's a lot stronger than anyone thinks."

"And you know that."

Natasha arched a brow, and Darcy tilted her head, "Yeah, your mysterious shared history. Right."

"You have to _help each other_ Darcy. That's the only way this works."

"Okay."

**Present, After Dinner**

Bucky was about ninety percent sure Darcy was trying to eat herself to death.

Despite the fact that there was delicious, hand-chopped latkes and even more amazing brisket on the table—Charlene may drive Darcy crazy, but the woman _definitely_ knew how to cook—dinner was a very tense affair, the entire Lewis family sitting at the long table in the formal dining room to accommodate everyone.

Valerie and Charlene spent the meal trying to one-up one another, emphasizing how perfect their respective lives were, with the former passing off veiled insults at Darcy for not finishing college and Annie for continuing to be a single mother still living at home.

Their respective husbands sat quietly at their wives' sides, while Annie's eyes were locked on her phone as she texted one of her friends, Lily was uncharacteristically quiet as she steadily killed off the bottle of merlot in front of her, and Marley and Mara were pretty oblivious to it all.

And then there were Darcy and Troy, who were engaging in an unspoken contest to see who could both eat the most and finish it the fastest.

The second Darcy's plate cleared and before she could go for more, Bucky tugged her out of her seat and wordlessly herded her off to the basement, kicking the door closed behind him and pushing her gently down the carpeted staircase, past the bathroom with a picture of an ice cream sundae puzzle hanging on the door.

"The hell?" She muttered as she stumbled into the room, catching herself on the edge of the pool table.

"Eating yourself to death isn't going to help."

She covered her face with her hands and shook her head, "Oh my god that was worse than when Thor gave Jane a goat for her last birthday and it ate Pepper's cashmere afghan and pooped on the fur rug. Kill me now _please_."

"Request denied."

Dropping her hands, she wrinkled her nose again, then hopped up on the table, her legs swinging back and forth, "There's a reason why I don't go home for the family gatherings that we don't actually have."

Before she could say anything, her phone chimed, and she shifted to free it form her back pocket, "Lily says she's sorry for being the absolute worst and arranging this mess and she's pretty sure her liver is not going to survive the weekend," she laughed as she typed a quick message back.

"That's unfortunate."

Darcy raked a hand through her hair and hopped off the table, "Grab a jacket, I need some air."

He cast a glance out the glass doors that led to the wooden staircase outside and the backyard beyond, "It's a little dark for a walk."

"Like you're not practically nocturnal," she grabbed her oversized sweater off the back of the massive gray sectional in front of the entertainment center and tugged it over her head. "But no. I haven't had the chance to show you why I love this place so much."

Hopping into her boots, she stuffed the long laces in her socks and held her hand out to him, and then used the other to slide the door open and let the brisk air into the house.

She led him out to the narrow deck made from the same wood as the roofing, but instead of moving toward the snow-covered backyard, they walked up a set of stairs that wrapped around the side of the house and to a patio that encompassed the back of it.

There were wooden beams that supported the angled roof, and Darcy flicked a light switch on one of the support posts, casting everything in dim yellow light, "The roof is removable, so you can see the stars in the spring."

Snow dusted the wide ledge that wrapped around the rooftop, and there was a fire pit in the middle with padded couches and chairs settled around it, and a pair of long loungers was tucked on the far right side.

"It's nice," he brushed snow off the ledge and leaned against it.

Darcy propped her elbows on the clear space next to him and looked out to the darkened forest the house backed up against, "Yeah," she murmured as she leaned her head against his arm. "I used to come out here a lot when we stayed up here. Would scare the crap out of Mom when I tried to sleep up here at night."

"Sounds familiar," he murmured as he ran a hand over her hair before squeezing her shoulder.

Sighing again, Darcy let herself fall into an easy silence, Bucky's hand gently resting against her arm.

"So," he drawled after a few minutes. "Valerie's interesting."

She nodded against him before looking up and pinching the bridge of her nose, "She tries to put on his façade that she's the perfect mother and they're this perfect family. It drives me _nuts_."

"But they're not."

"Nope," Darcy quipped. "Valerie's what people kindly call a gold digger. Like, even worse than what the media called Natasha when they thought she was trying to get in Tony's pants when SHIELD sent her into Stark Industries to evaluate him for the Initiative."

Bucky tilted his head—he'd heard the stories, "It's _that_ bad?"

Swallowing, she nodded, "When I was fourteen, she told everyone that she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and that she was leaving John and Troy to 'find herself'," she rolled her eyes as she threw up a pair of air quotes. "With the last few months we she had left to live."

"But she's back."

Darcy snorted, "She realized that she's an old hag and came crawling back to John less than a year later, and oh yeah, her cancer was miraculously cured. She's a Grade A bitch, and it pretty much proves that John has next to no control over his life these days."

"You're not kidding."

With a squeal, Darcy jumped and whirled around, "Oh shit, Troy!" She squeaked when she saw her cousin standing at the top of the staircase, the lights making him look paler than usual. "I am actually really sorry you heard that, I _swear_."

"At least you don't have to live with her," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets as he stepped up to the rooftop, stopping a few feet away. "I don't even know how I'm going to be able to escape. I need a miracle, or like, I don't know, _six_."

Wrinkling her nose, she tapped her chin with the tips of her fingers, "Have you looked into the Maria Stark Foundation? They give out scholarships like candy, and Pepper's on their executive board. I can put in a good word for you when she gets back from Europe, if you want."

"Thanks Darcy," he bumped his fist against hers. "I'm sorry about what she said to you. That was rude."

She tapped his hand again, "Shit happens. We're good."

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Troy rocked back on his heels, his throat working as he worked through something, and Darcy leaned back against the wall as she waited.

"You know," he murmured after a minute, staring steadfastly down at his feet. "Mom didn't talk to Aunt Charlene or Uncle Greg for a year after your told her you were gay."

"Uh," she blinked at the abrupt change of subject. "I didn't know I offended her so badly?"

He finally looked up, "Homosexuality offends her. I wouldn't be surprised if she was more excited than Aunt Charlene that you brought your boyfriend with you this week."

"Bucky's not my, he's not," she winced and flapped her hand. "He's, Bucky's my uh, he's my person."

She winced again as the stupid words left her stupid mouth, her face heating as she felt the pressure of Bucky's eyes on her.

"Well at least you can bring your _person_ home," he shrugged a shoulder, nodded at Bucky, and then made his way back downstairs, leaving Darcy to gape at where he stood.

Eventually, Bucky tapped her shoulder, and she squeak as she looked up at him, then pressed her hands to her face, "Did he just imply what I think he just implied? Oh my god."

Bucky squeezed her shoulders, "I think so," one hand moved to the back of her neck as he tried to help her loosen some of the tension building there. "This is a good thing."

"I feel like a huge asshole," she rubbed her eyes to try to ease the pounding in her head. "Oh my god, I need to tell Pepper that she needs to pull some strings NYU or Columbia or _something_. We have to get him out of there. God, what a bitch."

"We'll work it out," he smirked. "You can always hire him as your intern."

She rolled her eyes, "Hey, I love the kid, but not that much," she wrinkled her nose and then muttered under her breath. "And Jane's banned me from hiring anymore interns after the last one."

Bucky laughed long and loud, and Darcy glared as she smacked his shoulder, then shook her hand out because the metal one _still_ stung like a bitch.

When his laughter died off, they stood in silence and Darcy looked back out to the forest, rocking on her feet, "I don't know if you remember, but when Steve told you he was bi, what did you say to him?"

"That it doesn't matter," he said after a minute, his eyes clouding over as he tried to navigate the memories whirling through the cracks in his mind. "He's my family whether he's interested in guys or gals. I don't remember much from when we were kids, but I do remember that."

"You're good people Bucky Barnes," she murmured, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

He tightened his grip and tugged her toward the stairs, "Come on. I may be the Winter Solider, but if I don't have to be out in the cold, might as well not. Let's pick something from your Netflix queue and drink more wine."

"And they call Steve the tactician," she winked. "I've got just the one."

"As long as it's not _Troop Beverly Hills_ again."

She smirked, "You know you loved it, but I have something else in mind. Remember that guy who played the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant?"

Letting her walk ahead of him, Bucky rolled his eyes, "I started with _Nine_."

"Good man," she winked. "But Tennant was in this super cheesy romcom that takes place on this fictional island in the Orkneys, and he accidentally gets married to one of the locals. You'll love it."

"I'm not sure you actually understand my movie preferences."

"I am _absolutely_ sure you're going to love it."

Perched on the sectional, Darcy glared as she fought with the TV as she tried to mirror it with her laptop, muttering under her breath about how much she missed JARVIS, while Bucky dashed upstairs to get more wine and some snacks.

She squealed when Bucky jumped over the back of the couch and landed to her right, sprawling out on the longer side, "I should get you a bell," she muttered, nudging him as she pressed another button on the remote and the blue screen finally changed over to the Netflix page on her computer. "Yes!"

"_The Decoy Bride_?" Bucky made a face as he threw a bag of Chex Mix on her lap. "You kidding me, doll?"

"Would you rather we go back up and hang out with Auntie Val again?"

"Oh shut it you."

Smirking, she leaned against his side, elbowing him until he curled his arm around her shoulders, and she reached back and ran her fingers down the side of his wrist, her fingers tripping over the metal plating, "Just watch the movie."

Kelly Macdonald's Katie was being transformed into Alice Eve's superstar Lara Tyler for the fake wedding when the door to the basement opened and Darcy barely managed to lift her head off Bucky's shoulder to look back up at her dad as he walked up the steps, "Heh," she muttered, fumbling for the remote to pause the movie.

"Don't move on my account," he said as he leaned over the back of the couch, two boxes in his hands. "I figured you two were unavailable for candles, but here's a couple presents."

Darcy clapped her hands as she sat up, her body heavy as she leaned up and grabbed the gifts, "Yay!"

"You two have a good night," Greg said as he retreated upstairs. "Don't get into too much trouble, and try not to keep us old folks up."

Snorting as she ripped open the envelope on the long, rectangular present with her name on it, she glanced back up, "Night old dude."

When he was gone, Darcy dropped back against Bucky's side and went back to the envelope, "Who's it from?" Bucky muttered as he looked down at his own gift.

Finally freeing the card from the envelope, Darcy's brows flew to her forehead, "Natasha apparently," she angled it so he could see the tiny spider drawn on the bottom corner, and then tilted her head. "But how did it even _get_ here? Isn't she still in one of those countries that ends in –stan?"

"I wouldn't ask."

"Right."

Inside the narrow box was, in typical Black Widow fashion, was a thin blade and a note to keep it with her in her boot, "Oh Tasha, so practical," she grinned as she looked at Bucky, who was peering into a small box. "What'd you get?"

Snorting, Bucky took the card that was in the small square box out and read it again before he handed it to her, and Darcy snorted back a laugh when she saw what was printed on the card stock, "Steve got you a Netflix account?"

"Says it's high time to get the hell out of his."

"You've been watching French ballet documentaries and screwing with his recommendations again haven't you?"

"Maybe."

With a laugh, Darcy dropped against him and curled back up against his shoulder as she started the movie again, drifting off by the time the main characters got into a fight in the renovated castle that was supposed to be used for the wedding.

Hours later, she woke when her leg twitched hard, her breath catching when she realized she was curled up with one foot curled around Bucky's leg, her hand tucked against his shirt and the afghan on the back of the couch spread over them both.

She stilled when he shifted a little, and she felt his mouth graze her hairline as he resettled, his arm curling tighter around her waist.

Darcy blinked, and then yawned, her eyes fluttering shut.

Bucky Barnes cuddled in his sleep.

Who knew?

"IT'S SNOW TIME! SNOW TIME! SNOW TIME!"

With a yowl, Darcy flailed, rolling off the couch and narrowly managing to avoid smacking Mara in the face, the little girl clapping her hands as she stood in her snow pants and down jacket.

Popping back up, Darcy gently pushed her back toward the coffee table, "Jesus Mara!"

She glanced over her shoulder at Bucky, saw him sitting straight up, eyes wide as he scanned them back and forth over the room, and Darcy curled her hand around the one gripping the knife Natasha sent her and urged it back toward the cushions.

"Snow time!"

Taking a deep breath, Darcy rubbed the grit out of her eyes, "Mara you _can't_ sneak up on us!"

Unfazed, she blinked and tilted her head, "Why were you sleeping on the couch?"

"I don't know, because of reasons," her stomach growled, and Darcy pursed her lips. "Go back upstairs, ask Nana to toast up a couple bagels, we'll be out there in a few minutes."

"But Darcy, it's _snow time_!"

She took a deep, steadying breath and forced her heart to stop pounding, "_Go upstairs kid_."

Mara pouted and crossed her arms over her chest, then stomped her foot, "You're a meanie!"

"Yep, the absolute worst," she waved a hand toward the stairs. "Now _go_."

Making an exaggerated _ugh_ noise, Mara stomped away, the door at the top of the stairs slamming shut after her footfalls echoed down the hall, and Darcy sighed as she dropped her head against the couch cushion next to Bucky's hand, "I can _not_ handle children."

Bucky didn't say anything, and the hand under hers didn't move, but she could hear the servos in the arm whir as it began to shake a little, and Darcy frowned as she looked up, "Hey, you there?"

She watched as the muscles in his jaw worked, and rolled up to her knees, her hand still resting on his, "Bucky?"

The whirring was getting louder, and Darcy leaned up, putting her other hand on his cheek as she urged him to look at her, "Hey, wake up!" She tapped his cheekbone until he twitched hard and finally blinked, present again. "Big Bear. Basement. You're good, take a breath."

It was another long moment before he breathed deep, his shoulders hiking up to his ears with the force of it, "_Shit, shit sorry_."

"Nothing happened, you're good," she tapped his fingers and he looked down at their hands. "Can I have my present back?"

Bucky took another breath as his fingers loosened and he shifted the knife back against he palm, "Sorry."

"_Shut up_," she muttered, leaning up and kissing his cheek. "You're fine. I'll tell Annie to make sure Mara doesn't do that again."

Nodding slowly, he sat forward, leaning his forehead against his knees, "Okay, yeah. Thank you."

Darcy pressed her hand to his lower back until she felt the tension at the base of his spine loosen a little, "Take a few minutes, and get dressed," she waited until he nodded. "I'll get something for us to eat and then we go out and attack the rest of the family with snow balls."

"Snow balls?" He tilted his head against his knees so he could look at her, his brow arched.

"Yep. _You_, my friend, are my ace in the hole," she shifted his hair back, tucking it behind his ear. "Come on. It's going to be fun."

Swallowing, he nodded slowly, "Yeah. Sure."

Darcy padded over to the stairs, and was halfway up when she glanced over her shoulder, saw Bucky was still on the couch and breathing deeply, arms wrapped around his legs, "You good?"

He waved a hand and she saw him nod once, "All right," she called over her shoulder. "I'll be back in a few."

Bounding down the long hallway and into the kitchen, Darcy carefully rounded past Lily, who was staring blearily at the coffee in her oversized mug, "Morning," she said, eyes scanning the room for Annie, who emerged from the pantry a few seconds later.

"Hey Annie," Darcy chirped as she poured two cups of coffee and doctored hers to her liking before she grabbed the opened bag of bagels. "In the immortal words of J.K. Rowling, _Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus_."

Annie blinked, "_What_?"

"Never tickle a sleeping dragon," Darcy sliced a bagel in half and tore off a small piece before popping it in her mouth, the rest of it going in the toaster with two more. "Or in this case, never startle a sleeping assassin."

"You are _such _a nerd," Annie then actually looked at Darcy and a smirk crossed her face. "Nice jammies, sis. Does it count as a walk of shame if you didn't actually _go_ anywhere?"

She grinned wide, "Bite _me_!"

The toaster dinged, and she dragged the four pieces out and onto a plate before shoving two more bagels in to cook, "But seriously," she went on as she looked around for the giant tub of Nutella she _knew_ was around there somewhere, and let out a quiet _ha_ when she found it behind a decorative flower pot. "Having Mara wake us up is not exactly the best idea ever."

"Hey," she put her hands up. "I didn't know what she was up to."

"For future reference then," she resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she grabbed the rest of the bagels and a pair of knives, goggling at the cups of coffee before she tucked the Nutella against her elbow and grabbed both mugs in one hand.

It was an adventure in her semi-nonexistent balancing skills to get everything downstairs without spilling anything, dropping anything, or falling face-first into the basement, but she did, eyeing the closed bathroom door as she placed their food on the pool table.

Perching next to the haul, she grabbed half a bagel and started slathering it in hazelnut-chocolate goodness, her legs swinging back and forth as she noshed—not that she was all that hungry after eating so much the night before.

Go figure.

Bucky emerged a few minutes later and joined her at the pool table, murmuring his thanks as he downed half the coffee before tearing a bagel apart, shoulders hunched as he ate.

Tilting her head as she chewed her bagel, she watched him before humming and tapping his arm, "You okay? You don't have to come out with us if you're not up for it."

He swallowed the rest of his coffee and then shook his head, "I'm good."

Then, he reached out and cupped her cheek, his thumb running up and down the slope of her cheekbone as he leaned in and kissed her forehead, "You're kind of amazing Darcy," he murmured as he went back to his breakfast.

Staring at him for so long she almost forgot to breathe, Darcy shook herself out of it and swallowed hard, her thoughts buzzing a mile a minute, "Yeah," she murmured, staring at something just beyond his shoulder.

A little while later, they made their way out to the tiny back porch, Darcy gnawing on her lower lip as she pushed the door shut, and then took a deep breath, "Uh, Bucky?" He stopped by the stairs, eyebrow arched as he turned. "We should talk. I mean, there's definitely something that you and I should have words about, I think? I know. We do. Yeah."

She was pretty sure her face was so red it was purple, and Bucky smiled as he stepped up in front of her, cupping her face in gloved hands, and—_damnit_—kissing her forehead _again_.

"Later," he murmured, his nose brushing against hers before he stepped back. "Snow first."

"I think I hate you," she muttered under her breath as she stalked down the stairs after him.

He laughed quietly, "Doubt that."

"Shut up."

Fortunately, Darcy was brought out of her thoughts when she was pelted by snowballs from Marley and Mara the second she got off the stairs, her boots sinking into the snow in the sloped backyard, "Oh it is _so_ on," she muttered, ducking down under another volley and gathering her own snowball before she took off toward the trees to her left for cover.

Back pressed against the bark of a narrow tree, Darcy blindly tossed the snowball over her shoulder before leaning her head back and taking a deep breath as Marley let out a shout.

Something crunched to her right, and she looked over, smirking when Troy waved a gloved hand, a bundle of snowballs tucked against his other arm.

Glancing around the tree, she saw Annie helping Marley and Mara make a low barrier, and she darted over to her cousin and started helping him form more ammunition.

"You with me on this?" She grinned. "I have a plan."

Troy nodded, "Where's your person? Thought he'd be all over this?"

With a shrug, Darcy looked around, but unsurprisingly saw no trace of the assassin, "No idea where he ran-" she broke off with a shriek when a pile of snow dropped right on top of her. "_Holy fuck_ that's cold!"

Squawking, she brushed the snow off her head as she looked up into the trees where Bucky was perched on two branches a few feet above her with an infuriating smirk on his face, "No fair! Get down here!"

He rolled his eyes and tossed more snow down at her, "Ugh, lame!" She muttered, throwing a snowball back, only for it to shatter against one of the lower tree branches.

With a laugh, he swung down onto one of the lower branches and then silently flipped down next to her, "Got a plan?"

She smirked, "Duh."

The snowball fight was one for the Lewis Family record books, and it ended with all six of them in the middle of the yard, half-buried in snow as they caught their breaths.

Distantly, Darcy heard the door to the house slide open, and with great effort she turned her head toward the noise, "Come on losers," Lily called as she hopped down the staircase with a large neon orange plastic disc tucked under her arm. "Time for sledding!"

With a whoop, she dropped the sled on the snow and fell on it before it could slide down the hill without her, her hands curled carefully around the white loops of rope on either side as she drifted away from the house.

Darcy's eyes were wide as she flung around and flapped her hand against Bucky's chest, "Oh my god," she gasped as she tried to catch her breath. "We _so_ have to steal Steve's shield and go sledding through Central Park when it finally snows."

He chuckled as he propped up on his elbows, "We were camping out in Italy, there was this terrible blizzard, and we were huddled around this shitty little fire, playing poker as we waited the weather out, and Steve put up his shield when he ran out of chips. First thing Morita and I did when I won it was sled down this hill next to our camp. I crashed hard and the thing cut a tree clean in half."

Laughing, she looked at him, and her giggles died off when she realized that this was probably the first memory from during the war that he shared with _anyone_, and she realized out and squeezed his hand.

Annie, who had Mara sprawled across her chest, goggled at him, "Wait, you won _Captain America's_ shield in a _poker game_?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "But I've always been the better sniper. He's really good at using that thing like a Frisbee."

"_Seriously_?" Darcy narrowed her eyes a little. "You _won_ his shield?"

He shrugged a shoulder, "A while back," his brows furrowed. "Okay, it's been a few decades, I guess."

Snorting through her giggles, Darcy flopped back and stared up at the cloudy sky, "Oh my god, Steve's just been borrowing_ your_ shield all this time? Tony is going to shit himself when I tell him. I love it."

"Oh," Bucky laughed. "I guess so."


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7 (In which Bucky and Darcy FINALLY have that talk)**

**Three Months Ago (Stark Tower Kitchen)**

Bucky looked up from his very late lunch—it was well into the afternoon, but his timing had been way off for the last week or so—when he heard irritable muttering echo down the hall, and he arched a brow when a pajama-clad Darcy stomped into the room, glaring down at her phone as she texted furiously.

"What's up frowny?"

Stopping short, Darcy blinked up from her phone, and then her hair, which was wrapped in a large, frizzy bun on the top of her head, flipped forward against her brows, "Ugh," she muttered as she swiped it away. "Can I just hack it all off and be done with it?"

"I don't think that'll go very well with your costume for the thing tonight."

She dropped her phone on the counter and buried her head in her hands, "Oh my god I don't even want to think about tonight. Can I just sleep for a week or something?"

Bucky rolled his eyes, "You know Tony will just drag you out there in your pajamas anyway. Dressing up as your friend Sif is definitely your better option."

"Yeah, but Sif doesn't have frizzy gross monster hair."

"_You_ don't either."

Wrinkling her nose, she rolled her head to the side so she could look at him, "It's just not cooperating today. _Today_ is not cooperating today. And I am not thrilled. Shit like this _never_ happens to Pepper or Tasha. Is it a redhead thing? Wait, no, Natasha's not actually a redhead. Is she? Ugh, it's just not fair."

He put his hands up and shrugged, "You want help?"

"What?"

"I. Can. Help. You," he enunciated as he pushed his chair back, the legs scraping on the tile. "If you want."

After a slow blink, she tilted her head, "You can?"

Shrugging, Bucky gestured to the floor in front of his chair again, "Natasha had long hair when she was young," his mouth twitched as he spared a glance down at his left hand. "_Younger_."

"Oh," Darcy blinked, her brows inching together. "Right. And you helped her with her hair issues?"

She could see he was seconds away from rolling his eyes, "Do you want me to help or not?"

"Please and thank you," she bounced on her toes before swiping a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and plopping down in front of him, shaking her hair out of the sloppy, lopsided bun.

Bucky carded his hands through her hair and somehow miraculously managed to wrangle the mass of mess into three sections, weaving together two flawless braids on the side of her head that blended into the one he made up top, and Darcy could one thousand percent almost blend in with an Asgardian at this rate.

"So what are you going as?" She asked a few minutes later.

"I'm not going."

She tried to tilt her head back up at him, but Bucky urged her to face the cabinets again, "What do you mean?"

His hands stilled, "I said that in English, right?"

"No, well, I mean, yes you did," she nudged his knee with her arm. "But what do you mean you're not going? Don't you want to see Steve wear his old USO hot pants again? Because this is literally going to _make my year_. Tony's going to use that Asgardian mead that Thor's bringing to get Steve drunk enough that he'll agree to do the old routine."

"I'm sure JARVIS will pipe me the footage."

She tried to turn again, and he let her rest her arm across his knees, "Or you can just watch it _live _with us. Live a little. It'll be fun."

"Don't have a costume."

"I'll let you borrow my eyeliner and you can go as a grumpy raccoon. Problem solved."

He rolled his eyes and poked her forehead, "It was _war paint_."

"You tell that to the internet meme," she laughed as she rested her chin on her arm. "Come on. It'll be great."

Bucky was quiet for a minute before he sighed and twisted a hair tie around the end of the braid he still held, "I don't know."

"Well I do, and remember my rule?"

He let her hair fall against her shoulder, "_Not to worry_," he parroted. "I'll think about it."

She basically beamed as she propped a hand on his knee and pushed up to her feet, leaning in and kissing his cheek before she stood straight, "Thanks for the hair help. I'll see you later."

Whirling around, she made her way out of the kitchen while holding her phone behind her head and snapping a picture, and just before the ping of the elevator echoed through the hall, he heard her squeal and shout another thank you.

**After Lunch**

Darcy wasn't sure what was up with her and couches lately, but after lunch, she'd conked right out on the one in the living room, curled up in a ball in the corner with her head on Bucky's leg and his hand in her hair.

When she opened her eyes after what was apparently a hell of a lot longer than a few-minute snooze, she saw that Lily was sitting on the floor in front of the armchair to her right with her eyes glued to the basketball game playing on the television, and John was reading in the chair by the fireplace.

A sleepy squawk echoed in the back of her throat as she stretched the hand tucked under her chin out in front of her, then she patted Bucky's knee as she sat up, shoving her braided hair—which definitely was _not_ braided before she fell asleep, and _hell yes_ her hair was going to be curly tomorrow—off her face with her other hand.

"Morning Sunshine," Lily chirped as she stretched her legs, clad in a pair of garish pink camo leggings, in front of her, because in her words, if she didn't have to dress like she was going to dress like the administrator she was, she was going to dress like one of her athletes. "So is this falling asleep on people thing a normal occurrence in your superhero funhouse?"

"Yes, how is it living there?" John asked, putting his book down on his lap and looked at Darcy for a long minute. "The tabloids speculate-"

Darcy resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but her brain to mouth filter had yet to catch up with her grogginess as she said, "If I was having as much rampant sex as the tabloids keep speculating, do you think I'd ever actually leave?"

"O-oh," John coughed on air. "Well that's, nice, I guess."

Laughing under her breath, Darcy checked her phone as she padded into the kitchen for a drink, saw a coded text from an unknown number—Natasha, the wording meant it was absolutely Natasha, and how was it her life that she could actually decipher coded texts?—asking how things were going.

Aka: how was Bucky doing?

It flashed through her mind that she and Bucky _really_ needed to have that conversation at some point.

Sooner rather than later, preferably.

She tapped a couple sentences back—didn't mention him almost stabbing Mara, because everything was _fine_—standing by the sink as her foggy brain slowly cleared, and she dropped her empty glass in the sink before heading back into the living room.

Bucky was slouched on the couch, his eyes trained on the television and flicking back and forth as he followed the basketball as it was passed from one red-clad athlete to another, and Darcy came up from his right and settled her hand on his shoulder, "Hey, want to go take a walk?"

Sparing a glance out the window, the sun slanting across the carpet, he looked up at her and shrugged, "Why not?"

While he got up, she threw her jacket on and stepped into her boots, tugging the laces tight and tucking the rest into her sock, "Hey Mom, we're going out," she called over her shoulder to the woman standing in the kitchen with Valerie.

There was a giggle, and Darcy looked up to the staircase where Mara was hiding between posts on the banister that bordered the landing, "But what if there are bears!" She squealed.

"I wrestled a bear once."

Darcy could see that Bucky was caught up in a fragment of a memory, and she resisted the urge to wave a hand in front of his face when what he said actually registered, "Wait, what?"

"I was back in Russia?" He blinked, and then nodded his head. "I was in Russia. In a gulag."

"And you wrestled a bear," she said slowly.

He nodded again, "Yes."

Biting her lower lip, she took a second to imagine how the hell that was even possible—a couple possibilities popped into her mind, each more hysterical than the last—and then she shrugged, "Okay then," she looked up at her sister. "Looks like a bear-mergency won't actually be a problem. Later gators!"

Darcy curled her arm around Bucky's as they walked down the front steps, _for balance_, "So this bear of yours," she drawled, waiting for him to flinch or tense or something, but she went on when he didn't. "Was it a mutated bear? A man magically transformed into a bear? An alien bear?"

"No," he helped her down an icy patch, and then kicked it away. "Just a regular, run of the mill bear."

She blinked, "Well okay then," she wrinkled her nose as they descended down five more of the sixty-three steps. "Should I ask?"

"Probably not."

The rest of the careful trip down to the street was spent in silence, but not like the _usual_ silence, like when Darcy would sit in the common level living room and binge watch cop procedurals on Netflix while Jane slept off a science marathon or was otherwise occupied by Thor, and Bucky would join her, propped up by the window with a book from Stark's library, looking up from time to time when she'd make a snarky comment about something on her show.

Pepper had been the one to give him access since Tony avoided the library like the plague.

"Everything all right?" She asked as they turned right and headed toward the corner. "You've been quiet."

He arched a brow, shrugging as he shoved his hands in his pockets, "I'm _always_ quiet."

Darcy rolled her eyes right back, "Yeah, but you usually still speak in like, eyebrow ticks and sardonic facial expressions even when you're not talking," she flapped her free hand in his direction. "Now you're just, _quiet_."

"I'm thinking."

"So _that's_ what's burning," she squealed as he elbowed her and she caught herself against a tree, snow falling off the thin branches and onto her head. "Ugh, cold!"

"That would be the point of snow."

Leveling a glare in his direction, she brushed the snow off her shoulders and toward him, not that it really did anything but wet the arm of his coat, and she pointed her finger at him, mouth working as she tried to figure out a decent insult.

With a smirk, Bucky grabbed her hand, tugging her along, "I know, I know, I'm the worst."

She wrinkled her nose as she grinned up at him, curling her other hand around his elbow, "You're still kind of my favorite though."

"Only kinda?"

"Maybe a little more if you actually tell me what you're thinking."

He squeezed her hand, and it was only then that she realized that the whole hand holding thing was happing a _lot_ lately, "Just thinking through some things, doll. Not to worry."

Sighing, she nudged his side, "I will make you tell me."

"Probably."

They were walking past a park a few blocks from the house when Darcy ducked down with the pretense of tying her boot, and took a second to gather some snow in her gloved hands.

There was a slightly crunch of gravel before a wet ball of snow splattered across her cheek, "_What!_"

Darting back up to her feet, Darcy gaped at Bucky, who stood in the middle of the empty street, smirking as he held his hands at his sides, "Come on doll, you had to know I'd see that coming."

"Oh well," she threw the ball she held, and it glanced off his shoulder before she jumped up to the snow-covered parkland. "Catch me if you can, loser!" She crowed as she ran toward the swing set.

Off like a shot, she crossed the snow-covered grass of the soccer field, giggling as snow pelted across her back, and she rounded the goal and headed toward the trees that lined the far side of the park.

An arm caught her waist as she made it to the first trees, and she squealed as a laughing Bucky gathered her to his chest, but their feet tangled, and he fell hard against the tree to their left, his metal arm making it shake violently and dump its snow on top of them.

"Holy _shit_," she gasped, wiping snow off her face while Bucky lay across her legs with his head buried in a bush. "Cold, cold, cold."

Propping up on his arms, Bucky sat back and shifted his legs off her while he helped her wipe snow off her shoulder, "Uh, my bad?" He shifted and rested against the tree trunk, watching as Darcy sat cross-legged next to him.

"Was this what it was like when Steve was getting used to that new body of his?" She said through her giggles as she shifted forward a little more and pulled a twig out of his hair.

He snorted, "From what Carter said, it was worse. Something about running through a dress shop."

"You think about the old days a lot?"

"Sometimes," he shrugged, looked down at his hands before tugging his gloves off and stuffing them in his jacket pocket. "I was different then."

Darcy propped her chin on her hand, "People change. I'm not the same aimless poli-sci major I was before New Mexico. It happens. _God_, I can't imagine trying to get into _politics_ now. Hell, I can't even imagine getting into politics when I thought I wanted to get into politics."

Bucky reached out, curling his hand around her wrist, and she sat back up and let him run his fingers across her palm, "You'd be fine."

Nodding slowly, she smiled, looking up at him through her lashes, and then she shook her head and let out a hollow laugh, "Oh my god," she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Come on Bucky, I've been flirting with you for like, the last _six hours_, not to mention the last like, four months. Are you going to do something about it or what?"

For a long minute, he just looked at her, and Darcy was just about to let him off the hook and try to figure out how the hell to make this _not awkward_, not to mention somehow manage to get through the next _week,_ when Bucky tugged on the hand he still held, his other hand cupping the back of her head as he kissed her hard.

Darcy's eyes flared wide before she settled into the kiss, her mouth opening under his, and she shifted closer to his side, one damp hand skimming over his cheek and down his neck.

A pleased sound echoed in the back of her throat as he deepened the kiss, and it turned into a slight squeak as his cold metal hand moved up, over her hip and under her jacket and layered sweaters to rest against her lower back.

Sitting up and changing the angle of the kiss, Darcy threw her leg over his and settled across his lap, the hand on her back pressing her tighter against his hips as he murmured something against her mouth.

Her head swam a little as she made an agreeing noise back while Bucky dug a hand in her hair, his fingers curling tight around the base of her braid, which was sending a lot of happy tingles down her neck and spine and _why_ had it taken them so long to get to this point?

Bucky's mouth broke away from hers, glancing across her jaw and down her neck, and Darcy let out a tiny squeal, her breath catching as he sucked a bite against her collarbone while his thumb drew a distracting track up and down over the base of her spine.

The stinging bordered on pain in such a _good_ way as she threaded her fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck and tugged his mouth back up to hers, her tongue darting past his teeth to tangle with his.

After a while, Darcy broke the kiss with a gasp, swiping tendrils of hair that escaped her now ruined braid off her face as she grinned down at him, her thumb running over his cheek before her brows furrowed and she frowned, "While this would probably normally be considered a good thing, I can't feel my hands," she shifted a little, and Bucky let out a rough groan as he tightened his grip on her back. "Or my feet."

With a laugh, Bucky kissed her again before sitting up and brushing the snow off her legs, managed to tear his gaze away from her flushed face as he looked around the park, saw that the sky was dimming and the street lights were turning on, "We'd better get back before they send out a search party."

"Good, because I think I'm freezing," she picked at her jeans with numb fingers, and wrinkled her nose when they stuck hard to her leg.

He reluctantly let his hand slip off her back, tapping her hip as she carefully moved off him, holding her hands out to help him up, "I think you're overreacting," he murmured, as he let her help him up, then used their joined hands to press her back against the tree and he kissed her again.

"Ugh," she murmured against his mouth, her cold hands fighting against his layers to settle on his hips.

With a high noise that sounded suspiciously like a squeak—and really? a squeak?—Bucky pulled away, grabbing her wrists and bringing her cold hands to his mouth, and he kissed the backs of her fingers before pressing them both to his chest.

She let out a breathless giggle as he kissed her again, short and close-mouthed this time, and then slung his arm around her shoulders, "Come on," he murmured, pressing his lips to her hairline. "Let's head back and get you warmed up."

"I like that plan," she looked up at him through her lashes. "I _definitely _approve of that plan."

Pressing a quick kiss to her mouth as they walked across the snow, Bucky rolled his eyes, "Not _that_ way," he snorted. "Not unless you want to scandalize your aunt."

"I am _totally_ up for scandalizing Val, it would make my day for like, a week," she grinned as she slipped her hand in his back pocket. "And you _know_ Lily would just be amused as hell."

"And your father would probably kill me."

"You can totally take him."

They finally got back to the house, the sun low in the sky, and Darcy shivered as her wet clothes got even colder, then she looked up at the hill the house sat atop of and groaned, "Ugh, stairs."

Squeezing her waist, Bucky kissed her temple, "Come on you."

The sliding glass doors to the basement were still unlocked from the morning's shenanigans in the snow—part one, Darcy thought with a grin—and Bucky helped her out of her soaking wet boots, leaving them just inside on the rug before he pushed her toward the small bathroom at the end of the hall.

The ice cream sundae puzzle rocked as Darcy pulled the door open with a shaky hand and let Bucky lead her toward the counter.

Leaning against the tile, she flexed her fingers and tried to scrape her wool sock off her right foot, which she propped against her other knee, and Bucky pressed his lips to her forehead before urging her hands away, "I got you doll."

"Oh hell, she muttered as she hopped up onto the bare space on the counter next to the sink. "Who in their right mind thought it would be a good idea to go outside in the _snow_?"

Bucky laughed as he dropped her soaking wet socks in the sink with a splat, then turned toward the shower, pushing the sliding door to the side and twisting the taps, "I think it was yours."

"Obviously a lapse in what's left of my already limited remaining sanity," she muttered, wriggling out of her soaking set jeans and letting them fall onto the shaggy rug in front of the sink. "Go figure."

The pounding of water against the tub drowned out the thoughts whirling through her mind—they really did need to actually _talk_ about this at some point.

But there didn't seem to be much point in bringing it up when Bucky was peeling her out of her sweater and the two tank tops she layered under it, kissing her slowly when she shivered from the cold.

Sighing against his mouth, she pushed his jackets off his shoulders and then curled her fingers around the hem of his t-shirt, pulling her to stand between her legs, and without breaking the kiss, Bucky threaded his hand through her hair, gently loosing her messy braid.

She shivered against him when her wet hair fell against her bare back, and Bucky tore his mouth away from hers and kissed a line down her neck, Darcy's hands sliding down his sides and tugging at the waistband of his jeans, "Darcy," his voice was muffled against her skin as he pressed his lips back to the mark he sucked there earlier. "We shouldn't, your family-"

"It's not nearly as sexy when you're dying of hypothermia," she curled her fingers under his t-shirt, drew her hands up his back and then raked her nails back down.

With a growl, his hips jerked against her as he leaned down and nipped at her throat, "You're not dying of hypothermia, doll."

"Shows what you know," she snorted, shivering for a whole different reason as she kissed him again, one hand drawing up to his cheek, her thumb stroking back and forth over the line of his jaw while the other went back to the button on his jeans.

Kicking his pants away and muttering something under his breath that was probably an unflattering Russian comment, Bucky curled his arms under her hips and lifted her off the sink, and Darcy let out a quiet squeal against his mouth as she wrapped her legs around his hips.

He pressed her back against the wall next to the shower, the fingers of his right hand tracing the line of her bra before he adjusted his grip on her hips and stepped left into the shower.

Under the spray of the showerhead, Darcy let her feet fall to the tub as Bucky ran his left hand under the water to warm it before he drew both hands up her sides, and then he cupped her face and kissed her again.

"'m not sure what that meant, but I'm assuming I should take that as an insult," she murmured as she broke away, taking a deep breath as she rested her forehead against his chest.

He rubbed his hand up and down her back, stepped her back so he could duck his head under the water, "How are you even thinking right now?"

Laughing, she curled her arms around his shoulders and laced her fingers behind his head, her thumbs running up and down against his neck, "Well that's a damn good question, now isn't it?"

"Darcy Lewis, what am I going to do with you?"

"_Well_," she laughed as he cut her off with his mouth, sighing when he pulled away. "I mean, come on. You walked right into that."

Bucky tilted his head, leaning in and brushing his nose against hers, "Doll?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and kiss me."

Who was she to defy an order like that?

With her wet hair deftly re-braided and trailing over the hood of her sweatshirt, Darcy dropped Bucky's hand once they got to the top of the stairs, rubbed her eyes, and tried not to look like they had spent the better part of the last hour making out on the pool table.

But then Lily grinned wide when she saw them enter the kitchen, smacking Darcy on the butt before handing her a glass of wine, "Bathroom air vents," she murmured with a grin as she looked at Bucky. "They're all connected."

She squealed into her glass and took a long sip, "Did anyone else-"

"Don't worry," Lily laughed. "I figure I'd let you be the one to update your relationship status on Facebook."

"Oh thanks a lot," she rolled her eyes.

Tossing another grin and a wink at Bucky, Lily whirled around and strode over to the credenza in the living room where Charlene and Marley were putting candles in all the menorahs.

Darcy buried her nose in her glass as Bucky squeezed her shoulder, "Whoops?" He murmured as unapologetically as he was when he knocked them into that tree. "Could be worse."

"Don't even," she muttered, nudging him with her hip before they made their way over.

Valerie, who was perched on the chair and _supervising_, looked up when she saw them, "And just _where_ have you two been?"

"Trying to get arrested for public indecency," she winked as her aunt's jaw dropped, Lily cackling as she snapped the candle she held in half and tossed it away. "You know, day in the life."

"You're so funny, Darcy."

Darcy rolled her eyes at her mother's laugh and looked at Bucky, who looked wide-eyed and a little startled, and reached out and squeezed his wrist, "What did I tell you."

He smirked, "You just have to be right, all the time, don't you?"

"Well _yeah_."

A giggling Mara ran across the room and flung her arms around Darcy's leg, "What's indecency mean?"

With a laugh, she handed Bucky her glass and heaved the girl in her arms, "I think I need to get _you_ a word of the day calendar next year for Chanukah," she poked Mara in the side. "What do you think?"

"I think I'd rather get an Easy Bake Oven."

Laughter echoed through the room, and Darcy let Mara slide out of her arms as everyone gathered around for candles, Charlene passing out a shamash to each person before lighting them.

Darcy leaned against Bucky's side as they lit the three candles on each of their menorahs, and she mouthed along as the rest of the family chanted the prayers before melting the bottom of her shamash and fitting in in the center.

Presents followed right after, and Darcy sat on the floor in front of the mountain of gifts, tugging a large, thin box onto her lap that was tagged as for her from Steve, "Oh, a giant rectangle," she grinned. "I wonder what it could be."

"I know nothing," Bucky snorted from the chair behind her where he was opening a box with a t-shirt with Steve's face on the front and WWCAD printed on bold above it.

Cackling, Darcy wiped tears from her eyes and flapped her hand in the shirt's direction, "Oh my god, _where_ did that come from?"

He favored her with a pointed look, "Who do you think?"

"_Clint_?" She snorted a laugh at the continued look on his face. "Oh that is the _best_!" Her eyes lit up. "Do you think we can get _Steve_ to wear that? I can just see the memes now!"

"You and your internet."

Wrinkling her nose, she tore the brown paper off the box on her lap, which revealed a framed black and white sketch of the view of London from the roof of Jane's mom's apartment, "Holy shitballs," she ran the tips of her fingers over the glass. "Look at this. Oh my god!"

Bucky gave the sketch a fond look and shook his head, "That's Steve for ya."

"Think he'd ever give up a life of superhero-ism to become a full-time artist? Because he totally could."

"Depends on the day. And how much Tony's getting on his nerves."

Later, Darcy sat cross-legged on the middle of Bucky's bed, her elbows propped against her knees and her chin on her thumbs as she tapped her fingers together over and over.

"Doll?"

Sitting up, she held her hands out, "Can we have words?"

Bucky curled his fingers around hers, sitting with her knee pressing into his hip, the other against his thigh, "What do you want to talk about?"

She squeezed his hands, "What are we going to do about this?"

"What do _you_ want to do about it?" He sighed and looked away. "I'm not so good about this anymore. Don't know if I ever was."

"We almost had sex in the shower a couple hours ago," she nudged his shoulder when he grinned. "I think you're plenty good at this. We'll just take easy. See how things go. Scandalize the shit out of Steve when he catches us making out on his couch."

Reaching up, he cupped the back of her head and pressed his lips to her hairline, "That's how it's going to be?"

Darcy grinned wide and looked up at him, "It's going to be fun."

With a shake of his head, Bucky gathered her in his arms, "C'mere, doll," he muttered as they curled up by the headboard. "So," he trailed off as Darcy grabbed the throw at the end of the bed and draped it over them.

"So?"

"You going to update your relationship status or what?"

Barking a laugh, she curled her fingers around his collar and tugged him to her, letting him muffle the sounds with his mouth, his grip tight around her waist as he held her against his side.

They kissed, and eventually, Darcy distantly heard a sound from beyond the bedroom door, but until was only until she heard, "_Oh for god's sakes Darcy!_" From Annie did she break away and jump back.

Face flushed, she wiped a hand over her mouth as she looked up at Annie, "Hey there, what's up?"

Annie's sharp eyes shifted over to Bucky, who was pointedly looking toward the other side of the room, and Darcy watched as she snorted, "I don't even know _what_ I was sent to ask you about. Whatever. _Good night_."

She pivoted and stalked back out of the room, and Darcy let out a high-pitched giggle as she dropped her head against Bucky's shoulder and pulled the blanket back up her legs, "Well this looks bad."

Bucky poked her side and she squeaked, "Darcy?"

"Yeah?" She swatted at his hand before squeezing his fingers.

"Anyone tell you that you spend _way_ too much time around Barton?"

She laughed, which turned into full-fledged snorts against his side, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.

"Shouldn't we go talk to you parents?" Bucky murmured, his hand rubbing up and down her back as he giggles died off and she caught her breath. "That's what normal people would do, right? That's the right thing to do."

She put a hand up, and then arched a brow and started inspecting the tiny crack-lines in her manicure, "Wait for it," she drawled, tilting her head toward the still open door.

"_I knew it!_" Charlene's squeal echoed through the house. "_My girl's found herself a superhero! Annie, you be nice to Darcy and maybe she'll introduce you to that Captain America fellow! Oh happy day!_"

Amidst Bucky's quiet chuckles, Darcy snorted derisively, "Like I'd put him through that special brand of torture," she rolled her eyes and picked at the blanket. "Did she really just say the words _oh happy day_? Good lord, I don't know what to do with that woman."

"She's your mother."

A minute later, the door to the basement opened and shut, and footsteps echoed down the stairs before Greg poked his head into the room and held up one finger, "I don't want to know," another finger joined the first. "I don't want to know," and then there was a third. "I don't want to know. Yeah?"

"Got it Dad," Darcy laughed as Bucky tightly said, "Yes, sir," and Darcy could feel how tense he'd become as she lay against him, and it only release when Greg retreated back upstairs and the door shut behind him one more time.

Grinning, Darcy leaned up and kissed his cheek, "Crisis averted," she reached across him and grabbed the remote off the nightstand. "Want to watch a movie?"

"Whatever you want to do, doll," he murmured as he settled against the pillows.

_Prisoner of Azkaban_—the only Harry Potter movie worth watching, in Darcy's opinion—was playing on one of the cable channels, and she was toying with her phone, flicking through Twitter.

Eventually, she tapped up to the top of her timeline before tweeting out, "#thatawkwardmoment when your sister walks in on your making out with an ex-hobo super soldier."

Before she could put her phone down, it vibrated, and she saw from StevenGRogers: "Finally! #tookyoutwolongenough #seriously"

"Pft," she muttered as she angled her phone up so Bucky could see it. "Your bestie's a stinker."

Slouching against Bucky's stomach, she tapped back out, "If you don't think StevenGRogers is the biggest troll on this side of the galaxy, you are so, so wrong #thatisall."

Ten seconds later, he retweeted it to his fifty-eight million followers.


	8. Chapter 8

**Epilogue (In which everyone is home for the holidays)**

**Two Months Ago**

"So," Darcy drawled as she flounced into the den of Bucky's apartment, her arms holding her tablet against her chest. "Four for you for _finally_ getting revenge on Steve's revenge about that Cyclone ride on Coney Island and the thing with the train."

Arching a brow, Bucky muted the television while Darcy climbed over his legs and plopped down next to him, the screen of her tablet still pressed to her body as she curled her toes into the cushion, "How'd you hear?"

"It's so adorable how you forget that people weren't literally live-tweeting your outing yesterday," she reached out with one hand and patted his shoulder. "I was stuck in the lab with Jane, but that doesn't mean I wasn't tracking updates from AvengerWatch."

Bucky rolled his eyes, "Yeah, and?"

"Jane told me I shouldn't show you this, but I told her that ignorance is not bliss, and you have to get used to the fact that you guys are totally news-worthy now that you're back and best friends like you were in the olden-days and-"

She flapped at his hand as Bucky reached for the tablet, scooting back against the arm of the couch, "Hey! Grabbing is rude."

"What are you hiding, doll?"

A wide grin spread across her face as she peaked down at it, "_Well_, you know, so here's a thing," she trailed off as she flipped it over and showed him what was on the screen.

There was a picture, some eagle-eyed photographer snagged a pretty clear candid of a ginning Bucky and Steve coming off the Cyclone, Bucky's arm slung around Steve's neck, his other hand ruffling his hair while one of Steve's arms was visible around Bucky's waist.

Which was fine, except for the headline:

_IS BUCKYCAP THE NEW BRANGELINA?_

Bucky blanched, and then took a deep breath through his nose in what Darcy had long since been able to recognize as the sniper breathing technique that he and Clint used to keep calm while both on missions and while watching horror flicks on team movie night.

"What even _is_ that?"

Dropping the tablet on the cushion in front of her, she grinned as Bucky glared at it warily, "They are speculating, as nosy people have for the last like, fifty-something years, whether you and Steve are friends since childhood, or _more than friends_ since childhood."

"But we're _not_," he said stiffly. "I mean, _Peggy_, and you know, he wasn't so innocent with those USO gals he toured with. They were all just too afraid of Carter to come out with their own tell-alls."

Holding her hands up, she shrugged, "And?"

He blinked, looked down at the screen again with an uneasy look on his face, "So what do we do about _that_?"

"Well, short of finding a girl, walking outside, and making out for the paps to photo, which for the record, would not remotely be a hardship for me, just so you know," she winked and he rolled his eyes. "We just have to go with what Pepper says to do whenever there's another so-called certified news story claiming that all we do here is save the world and have _all the sex_."

"And that is?"

"Ignore it. Or laugh at how wrong they are and then take the magazine covers up to the roof and use them for an epic bonfire. I like both options."

Sneering down at it, Bucky finally rolled his eyes and shrugged, "Whatever."

She snorted, "But just so _you_ know, that's not going to stop everyone's favorite billionaire playboy philanthropist from ordering a giant print of this magazine cover, framing it, and hanging it up in the hallway for you and Steve to walk by every day."

"Because why not?" He rubbed his hands over his face. "Fucking Stark."

"And _you_ have had the honor of dealing with both father _and_ son."

Bucky slumped lower on the couch, "Honor is a very strong word," he gestured to the tablet without looking at it, his eyes focused on a spot on the ceiling. "Did you _really_ have to show me that, doll?"

"_Absolutely_."

"I hate you."

She grinned wide as she shifted closer to him, reaching across to grab the remote from the arm of the couch and turned the volume on SportCenter back up, "No you don't."

Rolling his eyes, he leveled a bland look in her direction, "Don't you have a genius to wrangle?"

"Not at the moment. Thor took Jane out shopping and I'm pretty sure that the lingerie shop in Brooklyn that Natasha loves was on their list, so they're going to be occupied for the foreseeable future, and I am _not_ going back down to our floor until _at least_ tomorrow morning."

"Well isn't that nice?"

She beamed, "Of course it is! I get to spend my valuable time hanging out with you, and will probably fall asleep on your couch. This is like, your best day ever."

"You are cracked in the head Darcy Lewis."

**Two Days Later**

"Oh my god, if I get one more reply-all email from a thread that continues to have nothing to do with my department, I am going to throw up or chuck my phone off the roof. Or both," Lily groused as she swiped violently at her phone's screen to delete the message in question.

"Rough life you got there Lil," John grinned over his coffee, the entire family sitting around the table in the dining room for breakfast before everyone headed back home.

She threw her balled-up napkin at him, "Just because you're self-employed," she trailed off with a little bit of threat in her tone, rolling her eyes at him as as she silenced her phone mid-way through another chime and dropped it in her jacket pocket.

From Lily's right, Darcy smothered a giggle, and Valerie took a delicate bite of her omelet, "You could always move into the private sector, take a position at a _real_ PR firm in Los Angeles. There's plenty of opportunity for a single woman such as yourself, and you can settle down."

"Well-"

"Ugh, Mom, maybe she doesn't _want_ to settle down," Troy snapped, cutting Lily off. "Just because you can't handle being single for more than five and a half seconds doesn't mean she's not perfectly awesome on her own."

Valerie's jaw dropped, "Troy Michael Lewis! You stay out of this!"

Sharing a wide-eyed look with Bucky, Darcy put her hands up, "Whoa, whoa, why doesn't everyone just take a breath, and we can all pretend this never happened and end this family experiment with little to no thoughts of homicide?"

"I second that!" Annie chirped, rolling her eyes as she tore a bagel apart for Mara, Marley sitting on her other side with her headphone firmly pressed into her ears. "_Seriously_. Being single is not a damn disease."

Charlene cleared her throat as she darted up, "Anyone wants more coffee?"

Everyone sat frozen until Bucky raised his hand, "Please."

The tension lessened slightly, and Darcy slouched in her chair and stuffed her bagel and cream cheese sandwich in her mouth to stop herself from saying anything to back Troy up and turn Valerie's attention onto her.

Under the table, a socked foot touched against hers, and she tossed a smile at Bucky as she reached for her coffee, shifting her foot and curling it around his ankle.

"So Darcy," Greg broke the silence. "Is the team going to be back by the time you guys head home?"

"Think so," she shrugged. "Apparently things are going well in China and they should be done on time. And Jane's supposed to be back from London the night before we fly in."

"So Stark hasn't caused an international incident yet?" Lily grinned.

"I'd take offense on his behalf, but if anyone _would_ cause an international incident, it sure as hell _would_ be him."

"Pepper has obviously been very good for him."

She snorted, "You have _no_ idea."

The rest of breakfast was spent on the slightly safer topic of some of Tony's pre-being-Pepper's-boyfriend era exploits, and but by the time they were done, Darcy was more than ready to get the hell on the road and back to Santa Barbara.

Standing in the driveway, Lily squeezed Darcy hard, "So what do you think about me taking my single, cat-owning butt out to the city this summer? Do some shopping, you humor me and let me act like an obnoxious tourist, maybe we check into a hotel and do the spa thing? Plus, I want to see where you live."

"I'm down. Doors are always open. And you would not believe the hotel connections Potts has. We're so set."

"That's my girl," Lily patted her shoulders, and then let her go and turned to Bucky, reaching out and grabbing his upper arm. "Be good. The sports world is very tiny, I have contacts everywhere, and we all _love_ our social media."

He smirked and covered her hand with his for a second, "Yes Ma'am. I'll keep that in mind."

"This one's smart," she grinned back at Darcy. "Good find."

"Always go for the classics," she winked.

Lily laughed and hugged her again, "Well considering that both World War Two transplants are apparently very unavailable, as if your friend's _Norse God_, I guess I'll just take what I can get out of the modern era."

"What are your thoughts on archaic weaponry?"

The innocent tone in Bucky's voice was _way_ too innocent, and Darcy glared and poked him in the side before Lily could say anything, "Bucky Barnes, you are _not_ going to play matchmaker."

Lily looked between them, "And I am _still_ not going to ask," she quipped. "Have a good rest of your trip."

Valerie was already sitting in the passenger seat of the other Lewis family's sedan, and John said a quick goodbye to Darcy and Bucky before he made his way over to the SUV, and Troy shuffled up to them, his shoulders slumped and his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.

"You're going to be fine, kid," Darcy squeezed his shoulders and ruffled his hair.

When he looked up, Troy had an absolutely pitiful look on his face that was only slightly exaggerated, "Take me with you?"

Darcy wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug, "I'll call you when I get back to New York. Pepper and I will pull _all the strings _we've got, wherever you want to go to school. Promise."

"_Thank you!_" He hissed, glancing at his waiting parents out of the corner of his eye. "Ugh. She's still pissed since I called her out at breakfast. Woman's not going to shut up the entire ride home."

"Just tune her out, and remember that homicide is not the answer."

He sighed, "Can I use her blatant disapproval of your life choices to distract her?"

"I'd be worried about you if you didn't."

That evening, after dinner and fourth-night of Chanukah presents—Darcy got a gorgeous pair of boots from Pepper, Bruce gave Bucky some books on meditation—they sat curled up on Darcy's bed, the rest of the household already settled in to sleep after the long day.

"Four more days," Bucky murmured, Darcy's eyes focused on her fingers as they trailed up and back over the plates in his arm. "What else do you have planned for us?"

She snorted, "Well originally, I was just going to sleep in, drink Mom out of her own wine stash, and accrue a really big collection of half-drunk water bottles," shrugging, she looked up at him. "You have anything in mind?"

Darcy could feel the burn of the look he was giving her, and she rolled her eyes and poked his side, "We are not having sex for the first time under my parents roof. Nope."

"You and your rules, doll."

"As fun as it would be to traumatize the Generalissima, Dad had enough trouble reconciling with the fact that Annie had a baby, let alone the sex that led to it. It would be mean."

Bucky tucked his hand under her shirt, stroking up and down her back, "Guess I'll wait," his words were grudging, but his tone said otherwise as he tucked her closer to him.

Leaning up, Darcy pressed a short kiss to his mouth before touching her forehead to his, "Thanks."

With a grin, he kissed her again, burying his hand in the fall of her hair, "You're welcome, doll."

"Anyway, we just spent the last few days in the snow, how about we hit up the beach tomorrow?" She asked slowly, talking as she thought. "Grab some food from this awesome seafood shack that is totally less sketch than it looks, watch the water, and actively _avoid _being caught in direct sunlight?"

"Sounds like a good plan."

Tapping her chin, a wicked grin spread across her face, "And while we're there, you know what else we should do?"

"Dare I ask?"

She was still grinning wide, "We should introduce you to the world of Twitter by way of making the best out of the ever-ironic Winter Soldier at the beach jokes."

He looked at her for a long minute, and then let out an exaggerated sigh, "You and your Internet."

"You know you love it."

**Four Days Later**

Greg made pancakes the morning that Darcy and Bucky were set to head back to New York.

They sat at the island while he cooked, Darcy on her phone while Bucky had Cat on his lap, the animal purring loudly as she rubbed her head against his hand before settling on his legs and licking his pants.

Darcy flicked through pictures on Instagram, rolled her eyes at yet another picture of her college friend's dog, which she treated more like a baby than a puppy, double-tapped to like a picture of a girl who was in her freshman English class at Culver, went to Ireland for study abroad and never came back, did the same for a picture of a dinner plate of a high school friend who had been getting into culinary blogging.

When she scrolled to a picture from Clint's account, her brows flew to her hairline at the shot of an exasperated Tony handing what looked like a very large bundle of money to a slyly grinning Steve.

The caption read: "_Tony bet that Steve couldn't use the flimsiest excuse known to man to convince Darcy to take Bucky home with her for the holidays. Steve is now twenty grand richer #WinterShockisthenewBrangelina_"

She slid the phone across the granite, glaring when Bucky let out an amused snort, "I should have known that punk was up to something," he muttered, reaching across with his right hand to double-tap the photo. "He was just _too _interested in getting me out of the Tower."

"I know he's your best friend, and Tony's technically the guy who sort of signs my paychecks, but I'm totally going to kill them."

Bucky arched a brow, his leg nudging her own, which disrupted Cat's perch, and she mewed before hopping off his lap, "Is it really so bad?"

"Of course not," she squeezed his fingers under the table in deference to her father, who stood with his back to them, listening to the news report playing on his iPad, which was propped up on the counter next to the stove's removable griddle. "But I'm definitely demanding that we get a cut. Or at the very least, a shoe shopping trip on Tony's dime."

"You get that every time you go out with Pepper."

She rolled her eyes, "Fine," she groused as she leaned against the back of the stool. "I'll figure something out on the flight back, and it _will_ be epic."

Bucky spared a quick glance at Greg before he tugged Darcy closer and murmured, "You're going to be busy," he kissed her ear, and then gently bit down on a spot on her neck that he found the other night before leaning back, smirking at the bright red flush blooming across her cheeks.

"_We-ell_," her voice was high and she coughed, and then glanced at her Dad, whom she _prayed_ was distracted enough by the morning's sports report and that he didn't hear. "That will be epic too."

"Oh Darcy, it was so wonderful to have you home," Charlene gushed as she hugged her tight, the whole family standing in the driveway next to the convertible. "Don't forget to call when you land."

She nodded against her mother's bony shoulder, "We won't," Darcy smothered a laugh as Charlene let her go and then threw her arms around Bucky.

"And it was _so_ wonderful to finally meet you," she said as she let a wide-eyed Bucky go. "You're more than welcome to come back and visit any time, Bucky."

"Thanks," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he watched Marley and Mara launch themselves at Darcy, and she fell back against the car before squeezing them both.

Annie sidled up next to him, "Gotta say, she can certainly do worse when it comes to boyfriends. You keep her safe, yeah?"

Eyes still trained on Darcy, he nodded, "Yeah, I will."

"Good."

"Yes, yes," Darcy was saying as she hugged her dad. "I will endeavor to be at least slightly more communicative, I promise. Maybe I'll call once a week. I'll have JARVIS set up reminders or something."

Greg arched a brow, "You can't do it yourself?"

"I haven't actually known what day it is for like, the last four and a half years," she waved a dismissive hand. "I need all the help I can get."

Laughing, he hugged her again, "You poor kid."

"It's a rough life we've got," she grinned as she held her hand out toward Bucky. "Isn't it?"

He curled his fingers around hers, a warm look in his eyes, "Only on days that end in 'y'."

Snorting, she rolled her eyes and grinned at her parents, "Look at this joker," she poked him with her free hand, and then dug the car keys out of her bag and looked up at Bucky. "Ready?"

"Whenever you are."

With another wave to the family and a final round of goodbyes, Darcy and Bucky got in the car, and Darcy gunned the engine before she backed it out of the driveway and turned toward the end of the block.

At a stoplight near the highway, Darcy reached out and tangled her fingers with Bucky's, grinning as she glanced at him, "Let's go home."

**A few hours and a few thousand miles later**

Late t hat afternoon, Happy picked them up from La Guardia and drove them back to the Tower, and when they stepped in the elevator JARVIS mentioned that the team was gathered up in the penthouse.

Darcy had a devilish look in her eyes, "Want to go say hi?"

Kissing her, he pulled back, leaned against the wall of the car and shrugged, "Not really," he said pointedly. "But whatever you want to do."

She grinned so hard her nose crinkled, "I want to go say hi real quick," her eyes slipped to the corner of the car. "Take us up JARVIS?"

"Of course, Ms. Lewis."

The doors slid open seconds later, and Tony and Pepper stood by the entry table looking at the tablet the CEO held, "Hi Tony," Darcy chirped, getting their attention. "Bucky and I defiled your jet. How was China?"

His jaw actually dropped as he gaped at her, and Darcy rolled her eyes as they stepped off hand-in-hand. "Dude, you practically challenged us. And the bet with Steve? What did you expect?" Winking at Bucky, she breezed past them and toward Jane, who was choking on her drink as she sat with Bruce, who was doing his best lobster impression. "Hey Pepper, we need to plan a shopping spree on Tony's credit card! I think I want to redecorate my suite. I don't know what I was thinking with that shade of green."

Chuckling, Pepper patted Tony on the shoulder before she passed him and kissed Bucky's cheek, "Welcome home. I'm glad you had a wonderful week," she looked back at Tony, who was still staring after Darcy. "Oh come on you. Take a deep breath."

The business world's most powerful duo walked off—well, one led the other, who was muttering under his breath about his poor, poor jet and that he had to call someone to get it sanitized.

Steve sidled up next to Bucky, his hands stuffed in his pockets, "So," his tone was deceptively conversational. "How was California?"

Snorting, he muttered something under his breath before bumping his shoulder against Steve's, "Fine, you punk."

"You're _welcome_," He pulled one hand out of his pocket and handed over a small bundle of cash."

Bucky arched a brow at it, "What's this?"

"Half of what I got from Stark," he smiled as he looked across the room to Darcy, who was sitting on the couch and talking animatedly with Bruce, Jane, and Natasha. "Bribe her with something nice for Christmas."

Flipping through the bundle, Bucky stuffed it in his pocket as he faced Steve, "You _do_ know where _my_ money comes from, _right_?"

He rolled his eyes, "I wasn't going to mention how you were the one who ran off with all of Hydra's dirty SHIELD money, but," he trailed off with a shrug. "I can take it back, if you like."

"Not even. I had to sell my soul to Twitter because of you."

"You created a free account."

"Like I said, _sold my soul_. Punk."

Steve rolled his eyes, "Yeah, yeah. You're welcome."


End file.
